Mythologizing Black Women uses innovative backstage research methods to reveal candid thoughts about black women as relationship partners in a book that thoroughly refutes popular ideology of a color-blind or post racial America. Slatton examines the “deep frame” of white men found in opinions and emotional reactions to black women as relationship partners, shared in online questionnaires. White male respondents reveal candid opinions on what they perceive to be black women's body types, intellect, femininity, and culture.
Slatton finds that the use of internet questionnaires limits the effects of social desirability and results in the expression of raw feelings on race and sexuality that are typically reserved for backstage settings.
Hyper Sexual Hyper Masculine? provides critical insights into the many, often overlooked, challenges and societal issues that face contemporary black men, focusing in particular on the ways in which governing societal expectations result in internal and external constraints on black male identity formation, sexuality and black ‘masculine’ expression.
Presenting new interview and auto-ethnographic data, and drawing on an array of theoretical approaches and methodologies, Hyper Sexual, Hyper Masculine? explores the formation of gendered and sexual identity in the lives of black men. It examines the intersecting oppressions of race, gender and class, while acknowledging and discussing the extent to which black men’s social lives differ as a result of their varying degrees of cumulative disadvantage.
Recent books have drawn attention to an unfinished gender revolution and the reversal of gender progress. However, this literature primarily focuses on gender inequality in the family and its effect on women’s career and family choices. While an important topic, these works are critiqued for being particularly attentive to the concerns of middle-class, heterosexual, White women and ignoring or erasing the issues and experiences of the vast majority of women throughout the United States (and other countries). Women and Inequality in the 21st Century is an edited collection that addresses this dearth in the current literature. This book examines the continued inequities navigated by women occupying marginalized social positions within a "nexus of power relations." It addresses the experiences of immigrant women of color, aging women, normative gender constraints faced by lesbian and gender non-conforming individuals assigned the female gender at birth, religious constraints on women’s sexual expression, and religious and ethnic barriers impeding access to equality for women across the globe. Contributors to this collection reflect varying fields of inquiry—including sociology, psychology, theology, history, and anthropology. Their works employ empirical research methods, hermeneutic analysis, and narrative to capture the unique gender experiences and negotiations of diverse 21st-century women.