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PART THREE
- Rutgers University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
PART THREE Citizenship, Activism, and Legal Dynamics Part III focuses on some of the political and legal ramifications of Black sexualities, particularly their implications for nonconforming groups. Each work emphasizes how issues of sexual citizenship and systemic injustice can fuel activism among sexually and economically marginalized groups as they strive for complete inclusion and full rights and privileges, like their counterparts in society. Each chapter also considers the effects of unequal treatment and unequal access. Two essays focus on relationships and family formation challenges, and the remaining two pieces examine health inequities. “Prison, Crime, and Sexual Health in the United States: How the Criminal Justice Systems Contribute to Health Disparities in the Black Community,” by Torrance Stephens, provides an overview of how incarceration affects the Black community in terms of sexual and reproductive health and the resulting disparities unique to this populace. Stephens argues that the U.S. criminal justice system and associated public policy negatively affect sexual and reproductive health outcomes among Blacks. He builds a case that the very high levels of incarceration among young Black men have played an important role in health inequities. By considering issues of prison, crime, and health, Stephens provides suggestions to develop preventive health strategies and public policy that can reduce risks to the communities to which inmates are released. “Black Sexual Citizenship: Understanding the Impact of Political Issues on Those at the Margins of Race, Sexuality, Gender, and Class,” by Sean Cahill, considers how heterosexist, homophobic, sexist, and ethnocentric public policies 170 PART THREE regulating family, sex education, and sexual abuse in prison combine to disenfranchise and harm marginalized groups in the United States. Cahill suggests that Blacks, low-income single mothers, same-sex couple families, single gay and lesbian parents, and LGBT youth are particularly at risk for disenfranchisement. Drawing from critical race theory, he examines the intersection of citizenship, sexuality, gender, and race, as well as how Black sexual citizenship is compromised and shaped by public policies. Cahill also interrogates how sexual citizenship and poverty are constructed along racial lines and the ways welfare reform creates tensions and harms some of the most vulnerable members of the Black community. Cahill develops a notion of “Black sexual citizenship” to express his assertion that social policies do not fall equally on all citizens; instead, the effect of recent laws and policies varies according to the race, sexual orientation, gender, and marital status of affected persons, even when the letter of the law appears to be neutral. He demonstrates this by analyzing several important policy initiatives, including welfare reform and the treatment of single-parent families; efforts to prevent gay marriage and related actions regarding gay adoption and parenting; and government regulation and funding of sex education for youth. Cahill’s analyses reveal that government policies have not only been damaging to the needs and interests of LGBT and single people in general, but they have especially disadvantaged Black members of these groups. By privileging certain sexualities and family arrangements, and by disadvantaging others in the realm of public policy and law, the benefits and responsibilities of American citizenship vary depending both on people’s race and their sexual orientation. In “Racialized Justice Spreads HIV/AIDS among Blacks,” Anthony J. Lemelle links systemic injustices to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the Black community. Despite prevention policies, interventions, and research to eliminate health disparities, Lemelle illustrates how the rates of HIV among Blacks exceed those of other racial and ethnic groups in the United States. He argues that a racialized social system undermines efforts to combat the spread of HIV among Blacks and recommends producing evidence-based policy to reduce racialized structures that would ultimately ameliorate HIV rates and other health disparities for Blacks. He adopts a perspective that similarly emphasizes the unequal impact of a government policy, in this case concerning AIDS, upon Blacks and Whites. He argues that there was [44.192.16.60] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 12:25 GMT) CITIZENSHIP, ACTIVISM, AND LEGAL DYNAMICS 171 a widespread perception early in the HIV/AIDS epidemic that this disease was primarily a problem of White, male, middle-class homosexuals. This, he contends, was empirically inaccurate at that time: HIV infection rates were as high or higher among Black Americans from the early 1980s on, and they far outstrip White rates of infection today. Nevertheless, this perception led to the emergence of a class of White professionals who dominated and directed HIV/AIDS research and intervention efforts, focusing them...