“Situated in the center of family values debates is an imagined traditional family ideal. Its antithesis, its Other, would be Black, female, and lesbian, a fact that Black lesbian feminist Audre Lorde pointed out some time ago.”īlack Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism This mythical norm is hard to see because it is so taken-for-granted. In essence, to be completely "normal," one must be White, masculine, and heterosexual, the core hegemonic White masculinity. In this context, ideas about "normal" race (whiteness, which ironically, masquerades as racelessness), "normal" gender (using male experiences as the norm), and "normal" sexuality (heterosexuality, which operates in a similar hegemonic fashion) are tightly bundled together. A master binary of normal and deviant overlays and bundles together these and other lesser binaries. It views race through two oppositional categories of Whites and Blacks, gender through two categories of men and women, and sexuality through two oppositional categories of heterosexuals and homosexuals. Such thinking relies on oppositional categories. Racism and heterosexism both share a common cognitive framework that uses binary thinking to produce hegemonic ideologies. Few question them and the social hierarchies they defend. “When ideologies that defend racism and heterosexism become taken-for-granted and appear to be natural and inevitable, they become hegemonic.
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