ABSTRACT
Portrayals of Black1 men during National African American Heritage Month have always been an interesting but conflicted issue for me. As an armchair student of history, and because of my professional interest as a Black developmental psychologist, I know that how Black men are represented is important. Each February, loving and positive portrayals of figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, and Frederick Douglass are revered by all Americans as African American history is explored in many of the nation’s schools. These positive portrayals in the nation’s classrooms are a welcome advance, particularly when one realizes that it has only been fifty years since Black students were legally allowed to enter these classrooms. Unfortunately, these positive February portrayals are juxtaposed against omnipresent media depictions of Black men as criminals, mack daddies, and urban sexual predators. Adolescent males that I have worked with do not describe the sexual aggressiveness that popular culture often portrays, but they are impacted by these images and ideas. My research with Black and Latino adolescent males examines their emotional and psychological experiences related to sexual activity. My work also focuses on how Black and Latino male adolescents’ beliefs and expectations about their sexual lives are influenced by their social environments.
