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This two-year phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of five Black gay (Quare) males who attended three different Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the South. This research project sought to gain an understanding of the experiences of five Quare males who attend or attended an HBCU and, contribute to the broader body of research that examines sexual minorities who intersection of identities were race, gender, and sexuality. By using a qualitative research approach to better understand human experiences, perceptions, motivations, intentions, and behaviors of Quare males, the study used Queer of Color theory with tenets from Queer theory and Black feminism to identify literature that addresses the constant shifting of gender, sexual identity, and issues of race. Data was collected through 60-minute semi-structured interviews with researcher reflections for each interview in the following areas: a biographical history, curriculum, and photo/artifact elicitation. Additionally, official school-related documents and materials pertaining to the experiences of the five Quare males, such as information from school websites, student handbooks, and general curricular maps, were used for analysis. Using intersectionality as an analytical tool, the data analyzed was open coded to arrive at deductive codes and then organized the codes to identify salient themes such as maleness, masculinity, hiding in plain sight and trauma. Results from this study suggests that messages from family, community, and K-12 academic institutions impact the participants’ lived experiences prior to attending college and those messages are reified through formal and informal curricula while attending their HBCUs. Specifically, this study drew attention to the idea that messages about maleness and masculinity have influenced the Quare males’ ideologies around race, gender, and sexuality and, as a result, they have learned to hide in plain sight and navigate heteronormative spaces to gain access and privilege while on their perspective HBCU campuses. This study significant contributes to the limited research on Quare males at HBCUs, explores how social and academic institutions such family, community/ church and K-12 schools experiences influence their experiences prior to and during their time at HBCUs and offers recommendations to HBCUs such as restructuring curricula and teacher education programs and Quaring Racial Literacy while also suggesting to multiple stakeholders (Families, Church, etc.) ways in which familial and community engagement could meet the needs of an continually marginalized and underserved population.

Worldwide uneven health outcomes based on race/ethnicity is a well-documented phenomenon and conversations relating to health disparities are well underway. In the United States, rates of new infections of HIV among African American and Hispanic men who have sex with men (MSM) have realized an upward trend over the past decade whilst rates among other demographic groups have realized noteworthy declines. The present study presents a quantitative analysis of sexual health communication and behavioral indicators with a view toward identifying whether African American and Hispanic MSM engage in fundamentally different sexual health communication and behaviors such that the divergent trends in new infections of HIV make sense. Through a series of descriptive, chi-square, binary and ordinal logistic statistical methods, the degree to which sexual health communication and behaviors differed between groups of respondents in the New York City area were analyzed. The results showed a significant divergence in sexual health communication and behavior, based on race/ethnicity, education, age and other indicators. In the overall sample (n = 212), African American and Hispanic MSM were found to be significantly less likely to adhere to HIV medication regimens, use protection, ask about partners’ HIV status and disclose their own HIV status compared to members of other racial/ethnic groups. Other similarly significant findings suggested a need to address the underlying causes of divergent sexual health communication and health maintenance-related behaviors that contribute to disproportionality in new infections of HIV among African American and Hispanic MSM.

Black South African men who have sex with men (MSM) face a set of adverse circumstances, including economic hardship and stigmatization, that combine to put them at an elevated risk for hazardous substance use and HIV infection. This creates a context where substance use is normative and high-risk sexual behavior is often engaged in covertly and under the influence of intoxicating substances. The overarching objective of this dissertation was to explore determinants of hazardous drinking and HIV risk behavior among black South African MSM with a particular focus on the role of social networks. In order to achieve this, I used data drawn from the study, “HIV and Sexual Risk in African MSM in South African Townships” (R01-MH083557; PI: Sandfort, PhD). First, I conducted a systematic literature review to identify studies that used social network analysis to evaluate alcohol use among adults in order to answer the question: how have social network characteristics been shown to influence adults’ drinking behaviors, both in terms of characteristics of their network structures and characteristics of their network ties? Results of the review demonstrated that characteristics of one’s peers as well as social network structure influenced egos’ alcohol consumption in a variety of ways and across settings. Second, I described drug and alcohol use among black South African MSM and identified determinants of hazardous drinking, a highly prevalent form of alcohol use identified in the sample. The results showed that hazardous drinking was highly prevalent and multiple indicators of social vulnerability were identified as independent determinants of hazardous drinking. Third, I assessed the relationship between substance use and sexual risk behavior and explored the moderating effects of psychosocial factors. The results showed that there was not a main effect between substance use and sexual risk behavior; however, among men with high intentions to engage in safer sex, substance use was associated with increased risky sexual behavior. Overall, this dissertation increased our understanding of social networks, substance use and HIV risk behavior among black South African MSM. Our results suggest the importance of using pre-existing social networks to deliver potential interventions. The results also suggest that the most vulnerable members of this community are at increased risk of hazardous drinking. Lastly, efforts to reduce HIV risk behavior should focus on both increasing safer sex intentions and negating the impact of substance use on sexual risk behavior. Taken together, these studies provide insight for developing potential interventions, including intervention that use social network data to facilitate behavioral change, as well as undertaking further research among a critical population.

This dissertation examines how Black and Latino men who have sex with men (MSM) are making sense of the contemporary HIV/AIDS epidemic and their relation to it. Black and Latino MSM in the United States are disproportionately impacted by HIV. Interdisciplinary scholarship on the matter has conceptualized risk as an intrinsic facet of HIV. However, this research has paid little attention to the process by which Black and Latino MSM form their HIV risk perceptions. In this dissertation, I advance the “risk ecology framework” as a novel socioecological approach for understanding risk perception. This framework conceives of HIV risk perception as emerging from individuals’ relationship to HIV as shaped by the intersecting influences of the broader social environment. I base my analysis on 40 in-depth semi-structured interviews with HIV-negative Black and Latino MSM in New York City, as well as a year of participant-observation with a health advocacy group that serves this community. I find respondents form their risk perceptions by reflecting on HIV vis-à-vis their respective and distinctive social locations. The intersections of race, class, and sexuality come to be associated with HIV risk across the ecological levels of an individual’s lived experience, revealing a risk ecology, or a set of interrelated potential threats posed by HIV. I find this risk ecology to be reflected in Black and Latino MSM’s framing of HIV as a risk to their bodily health and social wellbeing, on the one hand. Or, its framing as personally irrelevant, on the other. Relationships and interactions with family, friends, and romantic/sexual partners inform what Black and Latino MSM understand HIV to potentially threaten. Respondents and the people in their lives draw upon culturally-available discourses, rhetoric, and beliefs concerning HIV that reflect how the institutionalization of racial, social, and sexual inequalities structure risk perception. With respect to health-relevant behaviors, I demonstrate how the analysis of risk perception formation clarifies the ways in which Black and Latino MSM make use of preventative tools and construct meanings about sex. I conclude with a discussion of the broader implications of the risk ecology framework for future health policy and further sociological research. By interrogating what it means to be at-risk, this dissertation lends crucial insight into the persistence of the HIV epidemic at a time when the means to end it are available, and also enriches sociological understandings of risk both within and beyond the public health domain.

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 provides a sociological understanding of how conventional knowledge of sexuality negates the identity formation of black gay men in contemporary South Africa. It investigates the coming out experiences of six black gay men in order to reveal the disjunctures between being black and being gay. The theoretical formation of disjuncture is pursued through examining a number of sociological, historical, psychoanalytical, and feminist approaches to identity, sexuality, and society; featuring specifically the theories of George Herbert Mead, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler. The chosen research paradigm is symbolic interactionism, postulating both „pragmatist‟ and „empiricist‟ trends that lead to both interactionist and structuralist forms of argumentation. The interactionist approach to sexuality is central to the deconstruction of sexual conventions. It involves conceptualising modern sexuality in the landscapes of African colonial history and the global gay and lesbian movement. The prescribed literature on homosexuality is thus reviewed in conjunction with the South African gay and lesbian struggle, so as to spawn themes and perspectives for conducting life story interviews. The use of the life story interview favours the participants‟ own view of the studied phenomenon, yet aims to depict the structural influence on homosexual identification. Following the qualitative research tradition, the data analysis is based on the interpretation of narratives. It illustrates interpersonal relationships and microscopic experiences that lead to the self-acceptance and self-actualisation of homosexuality. Within these processes, various disjunctures that exist between the cultural sanction of lifestyle and individual choice, between parents and children, between religious belief and personal desires, and between gender identity and sexual orientation are disclosed. The findings are associated with the historical transformation of masculinity in South Africa, sex role performance, and the heterosexualisation of desire. The solution to the proposed research problem is discussed through concepts of socialisation and gender conformity.