African American Studies Commons^™

Tearing The Goat's Flesh: Homosexuality, Abjection, And The Production Of A Late Twentieth-Century Black Masculinity, Robert Reid-Pharr

Publications and Research

A negative image of the homosexual must be promoted to preserve the heterosexual society, an idea that extends to the construction of African-American masculinity. African Americans represent the lack of boundaries in a chaotic culture. The resulting presumption that blacks are subhuman and irrational comes from the history of slavery and the presumed separateness of the race. Homosexuals also have been cut from their history by society and therefore must rediscover their roots to reject society's negative images.