Black gay male identities and their place within the social hierarchy are organized by interlocking systems of race, sexuality, gender and class. This produces the social marginality of black gay men in seemingly neutral ways. Prominent features of this systemic oppression are stock stories of black gay life that construct black gay men as pathological, dangerous, conflicted, inauthentically black, emasculated, and heretical within public and academic discourses. In order to better understand these dynamics and add to the empirical literature on race/sexuality intersections, fifty-two men identifying themselves as black/African American and as having relationships with other men, participated in semi-structured one-on-one interviews which explored their accounts of the structural arrangements, social interactions, and cultural meaning systems that defined the experience of being both black and gay in America. These interviews revealed that black gay men construct rich and complex counter narratives which not only expose the complex structural arrangements, cultural practices and racial ideologies that produce their marginality, but also remediate black gay manhood as part of the black diaspora. These narrative challenges illuminated discursive, performative and cultural practices, as well as social interactions occurring in three areas of the men‘s lives. First, were strategic uses of a hegemonic masculine form I call the "Super Black Man" (SBM) by which the men counteract the heteronormative, and hypermasculine prerequisites of respectable black masculinity, and represent themselves as racially-conscious and respectable black men. Participants also constructed narrative challenges to those cultural repertoires produced by the black church which organize the dominant scripts of black, Christian identity. These accounts were distinguished by the academic resources they utilized to re-theorize the relationship between Christian faith and the black body, confront the white racial framing and heteronormative assumptions embedded in church doctrine, and transform their outsider status within these communities. Finally participants‘ narratives also illustrate multiple dimensions by which a black racial framing organizes their experiences as black gay men, and their connection to black communities. These negotiations suggest the need to theorize race/sexuality intersections as having both structural and interpretative dimensions and to see the intersection of race and culture as complicating the manifestation of racial inequality.

This study examines the ways in which Black gay men in Atlanta create and experience community and culture every day, notwithstanding those discursive sources that situate life for Black gay men as particularly troubled. Drawing on ethnographic methods, including participant observation and interviewing, I attempt to show the complexity of Black gay men by exploring their world in Atlanta, Georgia, a city that has increasingly become known as a Black Gay Mecca. Qualitative research examining the ways Black gay men create and experience community has the potential to broaden academic discourses that have increasingly medicalized the Black gay male experience, and complicate popular social sentiment which (when recognizing the existence of Black gay men) often posits their life as one dimensional or dimensionless.

AAMSM (African American men who have sex with men) endure homophobia and racism in their political realities because of their identity. How do multiple oppressions impact the experiences of AAMSM participating within Black churches? Despite the Black church's legacy for liberating African Americans, AAMSM feel demonized and alienated while enduring religion-based homophobia espoused within many Black churches. In the church, AAMSM are pushed further down the hierarchy of oppression and privilege. In response to these observations, this thesis employs a sexual discourse of resistance. I engage this discourse with a literature review in order to discover links between homophobia and AAMSM in an interdisciplinary manner. Jungian psychology is then utilized to interpret internalized oppression. This leads to a discussion of social and religious justice for AAMSM in the Black church through the lens of liberation theology. While the oppressed have become oppressors within the Black church as regards AAMSM, liberation theology affirms all of humanity. Liberation theology provides a message of love for AAMSM and a source of Christian ethics for the Black church.

This thesis analyzes the origin and impact of Black homophobia found in activist spaces of mid- to late-twentieth-century American society. Black gay Americans were subjected to intersecting forms of systemic and cultural oppression that were exceedingly hard to escape due to both the homophobia in Black spaces and the racism in gay spaces. Black gay activists and artists thus had to create their own avenues of expression where they and others could fully embrace what it meant to be Black and gay. This work utilizes a Black feminist framework to explore the roots of Black homophobia and how this type of bigotry was able to so deeply infiltrate Black activist spaces like the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panther Party. Black homophobia originated as a response to White supremacist domination of the Black body, and was able to spread through the community for generations through paths such as hypermasculinity, the Black church, and misogynoir. The experiences and voices of Black gay activists and artists are at the forefront of this work in an effort to shine a light on a group often overlooked by Black history and LGBTQ history alike. This thesis works to fill in one of the many gaps present in the historiography pertaining to Black gay life in America, though more contributions can and should be made in order to shift the field away from its historic focus on the White gay male. An investigation of Black gay exclusion from Black and gay activist spaces offers valuable insight into how Black gay activists and artists persevered and cultivated their own spheres of inclusion within a society that fundamentally opposed virtually every part of their identities.

During adolescence, self-identified gay black males may develop their identities differently than their gay white male counterparts. This may be attributed to the reconciliation of stressors when developing gay, black, and male identities within certain environmental contexts. To investigate this, twelve qualitative interviews were conducted of gay black males from which developmental themes were extracted. While many of the developmental processes are similar to their white homosexual counterparts, some differences were noted regarding racism, objectification by the white gay community, and use of the internet to develop particular identities. A new theory using dynamic systems theory that includes many complexities of identity development is proposed. A hybrid story-like model was developed to illustrate the roles of lenses and buffers as they pertain to how an identity functions. Lenses allow a person to see their way through a variety of experiences; buffers contain coping mechanisms and skills to alleviate tension from negative experiences. Future research should include other minority groups and women for a more complete picture of identity development processes. This would allow better tools to be built that can be utilized by intervention designers.

In this Master’s Report, I examine Samuel R. Delany’s use of language in his pornographic novel, Hogg. Through a postcolonial lens, I investigate the ways Delany employs white colonizers’ language to subvert white dominant patriarchal and heteronormative ideologies. As theorists Frantz Fanon and Hortense J. Spillers posit, language is essential to black identity. The arrival of Europeans on the African continent and the subsequent enslavement of blacks resulted in the loss of an indigenous African name. For blacks, the loss of this name serves as a larger metaphor by which one can uncover various wrongdoings committed by white colonizers, such as forcing Africans to learn a foreign language, refusing to acknowledge and respect an established African culture, and the physical violence enacted upon black bodies during slavery. In Hogg, the eleven-year-old black narrator negotiates his existence as a voiceless object and sex slave. I argue that through this narrator, one can see the devastating effects of colonization. Further, by creating a fictional world--the Pornotopia--Delany temporarily creates a space in which patriarchal boundaries no longer exist. Thus, the narrator challenges patriarchal, heteronormative discourse by taking advantage of the assumption that the narrator lacks the ability to master language. / text

The Black community and the gay community have historically experienced marginalization from society, public and private institutions, federal government agencies, and law enforcement. Black gay male leadership is not a conversation within leadership academia. This phenomenological study focuses on understanding the lived experiences and leadership among Black gay men who are leaders in Los Angeles County. This study found that the lived experiences such as oppression, mentorship, community involvement, and advocacy have influenced their leadership development and leadership identity. This study identifies how Black gay men define leadership, based off their lived experiences. It also identifies themes of leadership development for Black gay men. The results have implications for future research and leadership development among Black gay men. Understanding lived experiences of Black gay male leaders and their leadership development can help identify what core foundations/topics could be included in professional development aimed at building leadership development among young Black gay men.