Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Stop hatin', start participatin': Not all homosexuals are white! My dad knows I analyze data and asked me if it was true that there are very few homosexual non-whites. He's picked up the stereotype that all gays are Caucasian. (If I were asked, I'd say English). I told him that the prevalence of homosexuals is at least as high among blacks and Hispanics. According to the General Social Survey, it's 3.0% of white men, 5.4% of Hispanics, and 3.8% of blacks. I suggested that non-white homosexuals are more invisible since their ethnic groups are small, and there is less acceptance of the orientation among these groups.

According to The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, 7.0% of white adolescent boys say that they have been romantically attracted to another boy. The corresponding number for blacks is 8.2% and 9.0% for Hispanics (N = 3,101). Interesting how the ranking is the same for the two surveys.

7 comments:

  1. Perhaps greater intolerance of homosexuals/alternative lifestyle leads to there being more homosexuals as more of them fake normalcy and pass on their genes. Ironic if so.

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  2. Anonymous8:35 AM

    Note the down low lifestyle.

    Peter

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  3. praeloquor,

    Tolerance for homosexuals is pretty recent among all groups. I don't think there has been much time for selection to have occurred.

    One thing I've always wondered about is the whole berdache thing. Does anyone know if there really were Native American tribes that had a special shamanistic role reserved for effeminate men? I have a friend who is Incan from Southern Ecuador and he says that the tradition persists in his backwater region of the country, and that his parents are always leaning on him to move back to his village and adopt the role. He doesn't seem like the type to make this sort of thing up but you never know.

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  4. Maybe Amiri Baraka meant to write "Most American white men are trained to be fags poorly" or "Most American white men need training to be fags". With a typo like that, it's no wonder he never made it onto the faculty at Yale!

    Ooops, I guess he did make it onto the faculty at Yale. At least he knows the difference between the Hebrides and the New Hebrides.

    Oops!

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  5. Anonymous6:42 AM

    "I have a friend who is Incan from Southern Ecuador and he says that the tradition persists in his backwater region of the country, and that his parents are always leaning on him to move back to his village and adopt the role."

    WTF?! Hysterical if true.

    "Son, your mother and I are a little concerned that you don't want to go live in the mountains and take it in the ass."

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  6. Mark,
    True, but in european societies tolerance for eccentricity and being a bachelor were pretty high. A homosexual would be under less pressure to marry. I don't know what it was like in other corresponding societies, but I gather they tended to have more involved extended families and thus family pressure to marry was more important.

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  7. Anonymous11:02 PM

    I actually blogged about something similar the other day. Wondering if you had any input pertaining to my observation.

    http://chuckross.blogspot.com/2009/02/where-are-all-gay-black-couples.html

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