Читать книгу Still Straight - Tony Silva - Страница 17

In analyzing data, I draw on the rich theoretical framework of what is called “intersectionality.”233 Emerging out of black feminist scholarship, intersectional frameworks analyze how social inequalities shape lived experiences.234 Everyone has multiple identities and statuses along the lines of race, gender, sexuality, economic status, and so on, and all of these elements shape people’s lives. Larger social systems and social patterns affect all people, including parts of people’s lives that seem very personal.235 It is always important to consider how race, gender, sexuality, age, place, and other elements of social life interact to shape experiences and identities.

As part of an intersectional analysis, it is critical to consider how race, including for white people, shapes lived experiences. Racial preferences and partnering practices reflect how Americans are socialized in ways that differ on the basis of their race. People with shared backgrounds and social positions have similar dispositions, preferences, practices, and beliefs.236 This helps to explain why white people have similar attitudes about race.237

White people also behave in similar ways. For instance, while most whites claim to support racial integration, most live in segregated residential areas and have all- or mostly white social networks.238 Additionally, even though residential segregation has declined over the past several decades, most Americans still live in racially homogenous neighborhoods.239 Their social networks are also homogenous: research shows that 91 percent of the most important people in white people’s lives are also white, which is higher than the same-race share for black (83 percent) and Latinx (64 percent) Americans.240 The segregated residential and social networks of whites create emotional bonds between whites and distance between whites and people of color. Segregated residential areas and social networks shape how white people act and perceive the world.241

It is also important to think about how race relates to rural America. Many rural areas across the United States are home to a white majority, and not by coincidence. For instance, Jason Pierce, a historian at Angelo State University, examines the historical construction of the mythic “white man’s West.”242 Railroad companies helped reshape populations by encouraging Northern and Central Europeans to settle along their lines, for example by advertising in Northern and Central European nations, providing financial assistance to those Europeans who immigrated, and giving free land to those (Europeans) they sought to make customers on their lines. The US government subsidized these practices by providing land grants to railroad companies, helping to create an American West that was primarily white, rural, and small-town.

It is not surprising that the men I talked to have partnering practices reflecting racial preferences, since most whites across America do—and this differs by geographic location. Intermarriage rates are only about 11 percent in nonmetropolitan areas, as compared to 18 percent in metropolitan areas.243 This reflects greater racial and ethnic diversity in metropolitan versus nonmetropolitan America, as well as a much lower proportion of rural and small-town individuals who feel that intermarriages are good for society: 24 percent, as compared to 38 percent and 45 percent of people in suburban and urban areas, respectively.244 Similarly, when whites do marry a person of another race, they usually partner with either Latinx or Asian people,245 reflecting continued anti-black racism. Overall, being white and living in a rural or small-town area shaped how the men I interviewed understood themselves and sexually partnered with other men.