One of the Children: Gay Black Men in Harlem (Men and Masculinity, 2)

Rating:
Summary: Beyond sympathetic identification into special pleading
Review: The book contains many incisive quotations from gay Harlemites who consider themselves black first and gay second, and whose social and sexual networks are black. The research was done in the late 1980s for a Columbia anthropology Ph.D. The author, a white New Zealander, died in 1992, and it took a more years for the book to reach print.

Hawkeswood was so intent on challenging the focus on black male irresponsibility (and pathology), that he claims no one else studied middle-class blacks (ignoring SLIM'S TABLE, BLACK BOURGEOIS, etc.). On his way to providing an antithesis of the studies of junkies and slackers, he comes across as a Candide (or Pangloss), downplaying homophobia and "fagbashing" in Harlem and making his informants come across as almost saintly in their devotion to their churches, natal families, and social networks. Hawkeswood gathered some interesting material, and the social science literature IS slanted toward black ne're-do-wells, but is the solution "politically correct" bias in the other direction?