Adolescent Sexuality
Abstract
A great deal of the literature on black youth and sex fixates on sexual behavior and its accompanying risks. While this perspective permeates the literature on sex and young people in general, it is especially pronounced in research that focuses on black youth and youth of color living in urban areas. In this paper I argue that such work, while important to addressing real public health concerns, is profoundly limited. I first discuss the limitations of this work, and then review new approaches to studying and discussing black youth sexuality, highlighting research that takes seriously development, meaning, and context. Understanding how black youth themselves think about sex is central to understanding any aspect of their sexuality—whether contraceptive use, sexual initiation, pregnancy, or sexual orientation. It is also imperative to developing resources, policies, and discourses that encourage sexual health, responsibility, and pleasure.
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Marissa Guerrero
Marissa Guerrero is a political science PhD student at the University of Chicago, specializing in the field of American Politics. Her general interests include race, feminist political theory, media analysis, and historical approaches to political questions. Specifically, she is interested in interrogating the assumptions about women's reproduction that shape policies concerning sex (such as abstinence-only education) and those that are seemingly unrelated (mainly, social welfare policy).
