sexuality – Contemporary Racism

black and queer, and here – even if they don’t always see us

breebooth — Mon, 08 Apr 2019 19:53:15 +0000

One of my favorite topics that we’ve covered in this course thus far is the creation of counter-spaces. I am intrigued by this concept because I have created these spaces for myself at Muhlenberg without knowing that it had a name attached to it. What is more, it intrigued me to know that counter-spaces are something students of color across the country are constantly creating for themselves. I think my interest lies in the naming ...

“Ignorant White Girl”: One Man’s Attempt to Defend his Sexism

Connie — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 17:01:43 +0000

We’re pleased to feature this special guest post authored by Muhlenberg College (and Contemporary Racism) alum, Brittany Smith (’17). Brittany is at Columbia University pursuing an MPH focusing on health promotion and children’s health equity. A few weeks ago, I went dancing at a few bars with some college friends who were visiting. I also encountered one of the most fragile and aggressive examples of masculinity I’ve ever seen. (And, as a woman who dates ...

Gender, Queerness, and Performative Masculinity as an Escape: An Analysis of Moonlight

Wilhelmina Minney — Sun, 17 Jun 2018 15:42:28 +0000

In her essay “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe”, Hortense Spillers argues that the gendered configuration for Black people through slavery and its afterlife is “the dehumanizing, ungendering, defacing project of African persons” (Ziyad, 2017). She points out that, historically, Black gender has not been used to indicate a shared womanhood or manhood with people within white society, but to highlight how black people are out of step with womanhood and manhood. Essentially, Black gender can never ...

Trans and Queer Latinx Respond to Pulse Orlando Shooting

Connie — Fri, 17 Jun 2016 17:32:51 +0000

A brief video of reactions to this horrific event, speaking about the intersections of race, ethnicity, sexuality and gender identity.

Daily News Roundup?

EmilyBlakeslee — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 13:42:11 +0000

This morning, I had my coffee with my parents as we watched the morning news. When you watch the news with a critical eye, race, sex, and sexual orientation have a tendency to pop out. Racism, sexism, and heterosexism touched almost every news story, either within the content itself or by a comment the reporter makes. I could do a detailed analysis of just one story, but I think the sheer volume of things that ...

The World as a Mob

Daniel.Greenfield90 — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 04:02:18 +0000

So, as many of you may know, I am part of an all male music group here on campus. My involvement in this group has been a source of laughter, an immense amount of fun, and, of late, a really interesting focus group of people to think about from a social justice standpoint. The group, when it comes down to it, are really a social experiment in a pietri dish. This experiment is one that ...

The Privilege Wheel

ccaraway — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 03:02:13 +0000

For Wednesday’s class, we spent a good amount of time discussing the myth of the social identity, and the privilege wheel exercise raised some questions for me. For one, do certain aspects of one’s social identity have more power over the other? How much importance is placed on these aspects? I personally believe that social identities are situational. To say that social identities are situational, I mean to say that when we are met with ...

Is “Coming Out” beneficial to homosexual black men?

Keith — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 07:57:54 +0000

In class we have been heavily discussing stereotypes the past couple of weeks and although we have not limited the scope of our discussion to stigmatized groups, it seems those with the most salient stigmatizations inevitable surface in our discussions. This led me to wonder about people who had more than one stigmatized identity, and more specifically, identities that were in conflict with each other. The group I eventually settled on was homosexual black men. ...