“Will the Real Men Stand Up?”

Abstract

Given the ways that the exercise of racism and the ideology of black inferiority have depended upon entrenched images of black hypersexuality, it may be unsurprising that representations of intracommunal sexual fetishization and performance obscure the presence of racism. Nonetheless, such representations can also lead us to misinterpret how racial subordination is inculcated, negotiated, and challenged within the black community. The many responses to Karrine Steffans, her book Confessions of a Video Vixen, and the new cultural figure she represents (the video vixen, model, ‘jump off’, ‘groupie’, or ‘ho’) reveal the multiple investments in the representation of black women, and by extension, black men and their sexualities. Blake argues that although dominant discourses would lay blame for the circulation of misogynist images at the doorstep of the black community, understanding the formation of such a figure requires a far more complex reading. In addition to addressing the contemporary exercise of gendered racism, intracommunal discussions and debates about black sexuality (inspired by the video vixen) show that black popular culture can create new discursive spaces. Sometimes it also exposes intracommunal negotiations over the effects of racial subordination, the contemporary meanings of racial community, and the politics of black hypersexuality.