I envision the idea of activism as acts necessarily encompassing many things. Unfortunately, in the case of Black activism, race alone is commonly centralized. It is difficult to argue against the evidence that indicates that many injustices faced by people of African descent in particular have much to do with how race has been historically constituted. In particular, I am very concerned with the ways those who are deemed as “racial others” frequently find themselves physically sequestered in public as well as private spaces (such as Black churches, Black neighborhoods, prisons, and militaries). I am also deeply concerned about the ways being sequestered into places that are commonly underfunded, helps to paint a more clear picture of the multiple ways inequality, traveling along the axis of race, is perpetuated in society.

Though race, race as a social construct, racial inequality, racial injustices (social, political, medical, intellectual), racism and racists take a great deal of energy from Black activists, other systems of power that intersect with axis of race are commonly and summarily denied Black activists’ intellectual attention. For example, the ways that gender, class, sexual orientation, religion, religious oppression, and the popular cultural tendency towards a celebratory anti-intellectualism amongst young Blacks specifically must be considered...

Michelle Chen, among a few others, wrote recently about the opposition among LGBT and queer people, particularly those of color, to the further expansion of US hate crimes laws: http://www.racewire.org/archives/2009/08/do_unto_others_the_moral_slope.html.  To quickly summarize their argument… given the unequal application of the law, namely the racial inequality in the criminal justice and legal systems, why should we further contribute to the power the law has in terms of incarceration.  Furthermore, given our increasing awareness of the physical, emotional, and sexual violence that transgender people face in prisons, why would we want to put more transphobic in prison for longer periods of time.  Just for clarity sake, I should note that the recent discussion in Congress is about the Matthew Shepard act, which would expand federal hate crime laws to include sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.

Chen et al.’s argument is not to be taken lightly.  Like with...

We've got a number of things brewing at the NSRC in Education and Training.  I'm leaving for Denver tomorrow afternoon to co-faciliatate a daylong institute and a couple of workshops on sexual literacy at the NGLTF Creating Change Conference. We've also been preparing for our next regional training, this one to take place in Austin, TX, on February 26 and 27, and planning our annual Summer Institute, the theme of which this year is "Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the U.S."  My job as the Director of Education and Training requires that I go beyond ensuring that participants in our programs learn the basics of sexuality education and research and help them prepare to be professionals in this field - and that may mean different things to different people and there are many disagreements about what that means.  For example, some prefer to be called sexologists while others prefer sexuality researchers and sexuality educators while others prefer to be called anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, etc., who work in the field of sexuality studies.  I don't think there are many other fields that require this type of debate or consideration. 

A number of incidents over the past few weeks, personal, professional,...

The election is over and I’ve been thinking a lot about something that happened back during the primaries.  I’m sure you will all remember it.  This relatively unknown governor of Alaska was thrust into the limelight as the vice presidential nominee for the Republican Party.  Remember that?  You might also remember that shortly after she accepted the nomination (I think it may have been at least a couple of days) it was revealed that her oldest daughter, who just happened to be seventeen, was pregnant, was going to keep the baby, and was going to marry the father.  Do you remember that part? 

Things got a little crazy at this point.  Some people started calling this Alaskan governor and her family, as well as the rest of the RNC, hypocrites due to their undying support for “sex education” that espouses refraining from ANY sexual activity prior to marriage and frowns upon teaching young people about methods of birth control.  Meanwhile, the republicans started shouting back about how supporting this young couple during this time was the Christian thing to do. Then, the liberals called the conservatives...