Race, Gender, and Sexuality

With the rollout of the commercial LP in 1948, record labels sought ideas to build up their popular music catalogues by recording mood albums, or background music, for specific activities or states of mind. 1 Background music for workspaces and businesses had become more common following World War II, and postwar radio was increasingly organizing programs around specific times of day including uninterrupted stretches of continuous music for late-night listening. The LP afforded longer listening time, and record companies marketed background music that consumers could now purchase for the home. Between 1949 and 1954 mood albums for social gatherings, housework, study, cooking, romance, and relaxation flooded the market. 2 Columbia, RCA Victor, Capitol, Mercury, MGM and Decca had collectively released one hundred and seventy-five mood music albums, thirty percent of RCA Victor's non-classical sales were mood albums, and (excluding show albums) they accounted for eight out of ten of Columbia's best-selling popular LPs. 3 In general, mood's musical aesthetic comprised popular song forms with no words (but frequently wordless vocals), prominent melody, strings, muted brass, winds, piano, and limited percussion (with the exception of Latin-themed songs). Even with the number of mood artists and variety of arrangements, over time mood music has become interchangeable with easy listening, Muzak, and elevator music (Sterne 1997; Lanza 2004). This type of music can often signify bland (occasionally insidious) white middle class conformity devoid of any ethnic, racial, or sexual difference. One way of understanding the emergence and popularity of mood albums, and by extension its musical aesthetic, is to consider background music's hypothetical foreground during this period. Background music for workspaces was embraced by defense industries during World War II, as a way of maintaining morale, relieving boredom, and boosting production. Studies were conducted to determine the parameters of "music to work by." Some indicated that songs with vocals "stopped production lines dead," but choral groups and voices used as instruments were acceptable. 4 Rhythm was considered distracting for those doing jobs that required precision and detail, and should only be used for workers

Black gay men must navigate identities and stigmas related to being gay and Black, and report higher HIV incidence relative to their White male counterparts although they report lower rates of drug use and risky sexual behaviors. This study examined whether closeness to the gay or Black community correlated with HIV-related risk and protective behaviors. Data were drawn from uConnect, a population-based cohort study of young Black men who have sex with men (YBMSM) on Chicago's South Side. The sample consists of 618 Black MSM ranging in age from 16 to 29. Cross-sectional measures for this study include Black and gay community closeness, drug use, sexual risk behaviors, HIV testing, and health promotion behaviors. Closeness with the gay community was associated with greater pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) knowledge as well as participating in health promotion programs along with higher rates of transactional sex and having sex under the influence of substances, and increased odds of self-reported HIV seropositivity. Involvement in the Black community was associated with lower odds of reporting being HIV positive. Findings suggest that programs and initiatives are needed to help promote the positive aspects of the Black and gay communities, while minimizing the negative correlates of such involvements.

This study uses the relational content analysis method and theories of intertextuality, intersectionality, and womanism to explore the continuity of womanist ethos in select novels of the African-American novelist Alice Walker. It attempts to explore Walker's use of womanism as an intertextual trope in The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), Meridian (1976), The Color Purple (1982), The Temple of My Familiar (1989) and Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992); Walker's portrayal of Celie-Shug as a perfect womanist couple in Color Purple and their reappearance in Temple as mother trees; foremothers as role models in Third Life and Temple; Walker's telling and retelling of Tashi's lifelong suffering from female genital mutilation (FGM) in Color Purple, Temple, and Possessing-the subject of this paper.

presented in two main parts. A first, where race, gender and sexual diversity will be defined, at least in terms of essential indicators, so that it will be possible to specify questions related to each of the dimensions postulated in an evaluation, as well as their connections, in the presented context. In the second part, having this conceptualization as reference, a set of social dimensions will be proposed as a basis for the development of a concrete evaluation tool that includes race, gender and sexual diversity transversally in the social policies of the state and federal levels from the Brazilian government. Defining race, gender and sexual diversity The concept of race was developed in Europe within the biological sciences and appropriated as a social explanation during the nineteenth century in positivist studies that tried to define whether population biological determinants were obstacles or contributions to development. Racial theories supported several nationalist ideologies which were inspired by European liberalism and positivism and developed studies that demonstrated the psychic degeneration of blacks and mestizos and their strong tendency towards crime and their inability to conform to European civilization norms, as in Brazil, in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. An example of this, in the Brazilian case, was the anthropology work of coroner and psychiatrist Nina Rodrigues in Salvador, whose inspiration was taken from the Italian studies about race. She analyzed black bodies and was immersed in black culture and this resulted in the recommendation of a criminal law applied to black people particularities, because they suffered from the evil of crime. (Rodrigues, 1935) According to Quijano (2005), the formation of America is closely linked to the construction of social and historical identities that have resulted in the social classification of the population. This classification consists of a pyramid in which the black is in the economic base, followed by the indigenous, who also forms part of the labor force, though he is still seen as someone provided with humanity, and on top there is white population. The construction of this dichotomy between the black as basis of the economy and the white as a dominator was part of a classification marked by race discourse, which defined labor relations, what is seen as culture and the organization of a social hierarchy. Thus, as part of a "civilizational mith"