title: Intersectional Epistemologies of Ignorance: How Behavioral and Social Science Research Shapes What We Know, Think We Know, and Don't Know About U.S. Black Men's Sexualities.
abstract: Epistemologies of ignorance describe how ignorance influences the production of knowledge. Advancing an intersectional epistemologies of ignorance approach that examines how conscious (or unconscious) ignorance about racism, heterosexism, and classism shapes empirical knowledge about Black men's sexualities, we conducted a critical review of the behavioral and social science research on U.S. Black men, ages 18 and older, for two time frames: pre-1981 and the most recent decade, 2006-2016. Our search yielded 668 articles, which we classified into five categories: sexual violence, sexual experiences and expressions, sexual identities, cultural and social-structural influences, and sexual health and sexual risk. We found that most of the research, particularly pre-1981, centered the experiences of White heterosexual men as normative and implicitly constructed Black men as hypersexual or deviant. Most of the research also color-blinded White privilege and ignored how racism, heterosexism, and classism structured Black men's inequities. We also found notable exceptions to these trends. Black men who are gay, bisexual, or who have sex with men, and research on HIV risk were prominent in the past decade, as was research that emphasized the social-structural (e.g., poverty, heterosexism, racism) and cultural (e.g., masculinity, religion) contexts of Black men's lives and sexualities. We provide 10 recommendations to avoid intersectional epistemic ignorance in future research.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , The George Washington University.
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bowleg
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , The George Washington University.
authors.forename: Ana María
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Del Río-González
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , The George Washington University.
authors.forename: Sidney L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Holt
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , The George Washington University.
authors.forename: Carolin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pérez
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , The George Washington University.
authors.forename: Jenné S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Massie
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , The George Washington University.
authors.forename: Jessica E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Mandell
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , The George Washington University.
authors.forename: Cheriko
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: A Boone
mesh_terms: D001741:Black or African American / Q000208:ethnology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008571:Men; D011287:Prejudice / Q000208:ethnology*; D012725:Sexual Behavior / Q000208:ethnology*; D019529:Sexuality / Q000208:ethnology*; D014481:United States / Q000208:ethnology