Includes bibliographical references (pages 353-365) and index.
Introduction: no turning back -- I. African Americans and the new racism -- Why black sexual politics? -- The past is ever present: recognizing the new racism -- Prisons for our bodies, closets for our minds: racism, heterosexism, and black sexuality -- II. Rethinking black gender ideology -- Get your freak on: sex, babies, and images of black femininity -- Booty call: sex, violence, and images of black masculinity -- Very necessary: redefining black gender ideology -- III. Toward a progressive black sexual politics -- Assume the position: the changing contours of sexual violence -- No storybook romance: how race and gender matter -- Why we can't wait: black sexual politics and the challenge of HIV/AIDS -- Afterword: the power of a free mind.
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Publisher's description: In Black Sexual Politics, one of America's most influential writers on race and gender explores how images of Black sexuality have been used to maintain the color line and how they threaten to spread a new brand of racism around the world today. The ideal of pure white womanhood, Collins argues, required the invention of hot-blooded Latinas, exotic Suzy Wongs, and wanton jezebels -- images that persist in the media today in everything from animal-skin bikinis to the creation of the "welfare mom." Men confront a similar bias in a society that defines African American males as drug dealers, brutish athletes, irresponsible fathers, and rapists. Collins dissects the widespread impact of these distorted messages as she explores African American love relationships, sex in youth culture, interracial romance, sexual violence, and HIV/AIDS.