We position Stacey Patton’s provocative essay, “Who’s Afraid of Black Sexuality?” in The Chronicle of Higher Education, as a starting point for thinking through how silence about sex and pleasure has “left a gap in the classroom and in black studies scholarship.” While prominent black feminist scholars have illuminated histories of black women’s sexual violation under slavery and their counter-resistance, the culture of dissemblance in black communities to shield themselves from racism, and sexual ideologies that fueled Jim Crow legislation and lynching – few have said anything about “black sexual agency, pleasure and intimacy, or same-sex relationships.” Instead, black sexuality is exclusively positioned in relation to white violation, dehumanization and the larger project of positioning black folks as subhuman.

As a class, we will approach this question by positioning politics of representation and respectability within the realm of popular culture, such as pornography studies, and other highly consumed forms of media. Furthermore, we will discuss themes of intramural policing, and other forms of oppression performed within (and outside) Black communities as ways to understand how respectability politics are martialed in the current public sphere.