Roderick Ferguson's "Of Our Normative Strivings: African American Studies and the Histories of Sexuality" explores sexuality as a racialized, classed, and gendered concept and tool for the exertion of power within or on a group.  His analysis of queer of color and women of color studies discusses how these disciplines find the definition of heterogeneity is an active process engaged by top down strategies from white powers and upper class of color as well as parallel efforts from all members of the group of color.  His article follows the historical development of black sexuality heteronormative formation especially during and after America's reconstruction period.  This heteronormative sexuality structuring was and is an act of economic security as well as control over membership, class, and citizenship.

Institutions for gendered education were constructed during the reconstruction era and justified through a philosophy that these gendered roles were an important foundation toward achieving economic stability within the newly enfranchised black community.  A stable black economy was also preached as a strategy for eliminating or at least decreasing separation between races because "money is money" and reaches beyond racial divides.  In order to achieve this promised racial equality, blacks needed to achieve economic power which was said to only be possible through this gendered structure of role division.

Sexuality was and is policed as an issue of morality and morality becomes another ticket into or out of a group with power.  Membership and citizenship are decided by what those in power see to be acceptable behavior versus what is not and "acceptable" has a relatively narrow definition.  We are still seeing the policing of sexuality and gender roles through practices like "midnight raids" on (especially) black women receiving welfare.  Sexuality is utilized as another tool of power that either legitimizes or delegitimizes a person's personal identity, economic stability, class affiliations, and citizenship status - socially as well as under the law.

Ferguson utilizes Foucault's Governmentality to discuss to examine how theories of power act activate "through the constitution of agency rather than the abolition of it" (p95), stating that the African American middle class saw an investment in conforming with the class in power's definition of sexuality as a strategy for liberation, citizenship and belonging.  In doing so they internalize the oppression from the white oppressor and become an active agent in oppressing sexuality within their own group.

A quote from one of the essays that Ferguson quotes on page 98 belies the black sentiment of reconstruction era heteronormative sexuality formation that has carried all the way into today's discussion on heteronormativity: "This should be a matter of grave concern to every Negro who has the future of the race at heart."  This statement is the clearest illustration of the flow of power through sexuality onto a people as a tool toward liberation.  It demands a responsibility of all individuals who desire membership or even citizenship to conform to a heteronormative construction of sexuality.  Within the statement there is almost a call to action to "get on board if you care" that simultaneously smacks of a guilt-trippy "if you are not with us, you're against us" attitude.

Discussion Question:
Since the manifestation of power through practices of sexuality permeate everything and every discipline, should we incorporate this into our research as another intersection or center as the starting point for examining the situation of all things in the US?