"The Boundaries of Blackness"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that Cohen challenges the notion of a cohesive African-American vote by noting that African-Americans failed to become a strong political force because their political, business, and church leaders focus on imbibing the values of mainstream, middle-class America. The author points out that Cohen argues that, despite the growing threat of AIDS, African-American leadership failed to galvanize the population around this issue, which affects African-Americans as a group, despite categorical differences. The paper states that the Cohen believes that the attitudes of black leaders resulted in a secondary marginalization of gays and lesbians, who, due to their race and sexual orientation, remained among the most disenfranchised citizens.

From the Paper:

"Cohen begins by dispelling the notion of a politically-cohesive African American community, one wherein race supposedly overrides differences spawned by class, gender or even ethnicity. Instead, she maintains that this cohesion is "being challenged and sometimes replaced by cross-cutting issues and crises rooted in or built on the often hidden differences, cleavages, or fault lines of marginal communities" (9). There is thus no strong "black vote," because the African American community is highly fragmented and factionalized."

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