Nigga-Gender
Vershawn Ashanti Young
Rhetoric and African American World Studies
University of Iowa
Paper Description: My primary interest in this paper,
albeit ambitious, is to analyze the racialized structures
through which blacks and whites live out our racial and sexual
identities, in their similarities but especially in their
differences. I explore whether or not we should understand
gender and sexuality as a set of behaviors, a function of what
you do rather than what you are—so not an identity at all. Or
are gender and sexuality like race, entirely a function of what
you are rather than what you do? And is this difference (or
similarity) the same for blacks as it is for whites? Or if it is
wrong to ask whether race and sexuality are different from or
alike race, since they are, as many believe, simultaneously
occurring social constructions, how can understanding them as
such be any different from understanding or even supporting
essentialism?; and how, it might be added, do performative
accounts fail (within the view of social construction) to
release us from the danger of essentialism? And, how does the
danger of essentialism manifest differently for whites than for
blacks? —VAY
[Thursday, March 11;
7:30-9:30
PM; 204 Jefferson Building]
