Black Youth and Empowerment: Sex, Politics, and Culture
This project will examine the attitudes, resources, and culture of African American youth ages 15 to 25, exploring how these factors and others influence their decision-making, norms, and behavior in critical domains such as sex, health, and politics. Arguably more than any other subgroup of Americans, African American youth reflect the challenges of inclusion and empowerment in the post–civil rights period. At the core of this project will be an exploration of what young black Americans think about the political, cultural, and sexual choices and challenges confronting them and their peer group. We are especially interested in understanding what new factors help to shape or contribute to the social and political attitudes and behaviors of African American youth. For example, the importance of such factors as family composition, socioeconomic status, and peer group behavior has been established through previous research as playing a significant role in the sexual and social choices of young African Americans. This study, however, will expand the lens of analysis to examine other influences such as political efficacy, rap music, spirituality, and religion and their role in shaping both sexual learning and sexual decision-making.
This project will employ a multi-methodological research design, including a new survey of young people ages 15 to 25. The new survey data will be paired with in-depth interviews with African American youth and content analysis of rap music. The first stage of this project, funded by the Ford Foundation, will focus on the development, mounting, and analysis of a new national survey of young people. The second stage will focus on conducting in-depth interviews with African American youth. These interviews will provide a more detailed and layered understanding of the sexual attitudes, decision-making, and behavior of young African Americans. During the third stage of the project, graduate student members of the research team will pursue extended content analysis of popular rap music to assess the messages contained in these cultural vehicles.
The information gathered from this research will be disseminated to black youth, advocates, teachers, policymakers, community organizers, and others directly involved in shaping the lived environment of black youth. This project seeks to generate new information and data that will expand the human and social capital of young African Americans, facilitating their general empowerment through highlighting their voices and experiences.
