Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies, and Denial in Black America (Hardcover)

~ Keith Boykin (Author), E. Lynn Harris (Foreword) "I STARTED WORKING at Sears in the fall semester of my last year in high school..." (more)
Key Phrases: straight black men, black gay men, low story, White House, New York Times, Los Angeles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the past year, J.L. King's On the Down Low: A Journey into the Lives of "Straight" Black Men Who Sleep with Men, a New York Times Magazine piece and Oprah attention helped make a cultural phenomenon out of life "on the DL." Here, writer and activist Boykin (One More River to Cross) addresses what he sees as the implicitly racist and homophobic undertones of the media's coverage. He offers a point-by-point refutation of King's take on the DL - King's book, Boykin says, suffers from overgeneralizations, inconsistencies and distortions - and accuses King of serving up another "stereotypical image of black men as pathological liars, surreptitiously satisfying their primitive sexual cravings by cheating on their wives." But the heart of Boykin's argument is that the media, which often blame closeted black men for transmitting HIV to their female partners, are avoiding the opportunity to responsibly discuss the realities of sexuality, gender, race and AIDS. Boykin lucidly draws on science as well as personal experience in this important book. And while many of the cultural manifestations of black sexuality that Boykin documents here are fascinating - e.g., references to the DL (which Boykin defines as cheating on a partner regardless of one's sexuality) in popular music - the power of his book comes from his impassioned call to examine the real facts of sexual behavior and HIV transmission. (Feb.)
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Product Description

Bolstered by national television exposure on Oprah and a cover story in the New York Times Magazine, the "down low"—a term used to refer to closeted black men who have sex with men—was thrust out into the open last year. Keith Boykin, a former Clinton White House aide, syndicated columnist, and AIDS activist, breaks new ground by going beyond the media hype with the first responsible, eye-opening look at the down low sensation. Unlike all previous accounts on the topic, Beyond the Down Low refreshingly presents the DL not merely as a problem of gay and bisexual men living in the shadows and endangering women with HIV, but more broadly as a telling example of the African-American community’s overall failure to engage in critical but uncomfortable conversations about sexuality. Chief among those blacks who have lagged behind in leadership have been the black church, the African-American news media, and the black civil rights establishment, including the NAACP. Beyond the Down Low is a provocative, timely, and well-researched answer to the question "Why are so many black men on the DL?" More importantly, the book is a prescriptive solution to ending the closet in black America.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (January 2, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786714344
• ISBN-13: 978-0786714346
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #132,631 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Boykin gives the low down about sexual politics and race, March 18, 2005

By	Robin Orlowski "political activist" (United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Black men historically were portrayed as sexual predators. Harper Lee's classic novel 'To kill a mockingbird' after all had a black man standing trial in a deep south courtroom for allegedly assaulting a white woman, also realizing that his fair trial was a long-shot. The father, Atticus Finch became a town pariah only for believing that his client deserved justice.

Yet, America likes to believe that we have moved beyond this and 'Willie Horton'. In our schools, mass media, and pop culture, we desperately want to believe that people are being treated fairly. This and the black community's historic memory of 'savagery/respectabilty' portrayals are not helping the intended audiences.

Keith Boykin clarifies that America is still hung up on the intersection of sex, sexuality, and ethnicity. He also argues the hang-up prevents black men and communities from having a needed dialogue about sexuality and civil rights. Black people who find themselves outside the heterosexual binary are being attacked by the dominant society, but also face resistance from within their own communities. Some black churches who easily grasp (and were in the forefront for) racial equality are silent on sexuality, or worse---promote hatred.

Boykin also takes on the recent inroads which white conservatives are making to black churches to downplay their past support for segregation. Because these same people have attacked and/or are attacking civil rights, Boykin is skeptical of their motives. He believes that the white conservatives are only trying to divide black communities and thus prevent real equality for all communities from being realized. Boykin argues that Black churches should not support movements which argue on behalf of discrimination.

Boykin's book is responding to an earlier work by another author, but this publication is soothing in tone. It wants people to understand that differences have always divided Americans. Such differentiation occurs ironically when the need for unity is especially pronounced. Silence and closed-minds prevent communities from overcoming discrimination in the present and working towards a better future for all.

Boykin's book is a provocative read for all people. For a challenging sex education get this title today!

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant; a must for those who've read King's " On the DL", March 20, 2005

By	Earl Hazell (New York) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

"Part of what concerned me [about King and the "Down Low" phenomenon being publicized in the media] was that the connection between the down low and black women seemed a bit illogical. There were two ways to look at it. Either the down low was new or the down low was old, but either way it did not make sense. If the down low was new in 2001, it could not have been responsible for an epidemic that was twenty years old. On the other hand, if the down low was old in 2001, then we should have been alarmed about HIV infection rates among black women ten to fifteen years earlier when the epidemic was raging out of control...

"The AIDS community of funders, researches, activists...had a problem...some activists [in the early 90's] decided to market the epidemic for Middle America... 'There was definitely an effort to make AIDS more compelling to the Black community' [Phil Wilson] recalled, 'and that process entailed a de-gaying of the epidemic'..."

Keith Boykin
BEYOND THE DOWN LOW
From Chapter Five
"When a Disease Becomes an Excuse"

"Governor McGreeley [of New Jersey]'s wife must have been going through a full range of emotions the day she stood next to her husband at his press conference...McGreeley also admitted to 'an adult consensual affair with another man' which he said 'violates my bonds of matrimony'. That was the real bombshell...dropped that day...By announcing his affair with another man, Governor McGreeley...proved that the down low is not just a black thing...We should have known that black men were not the only ones who cheated on their wives. Or had we bought into the myth of black male identity that constructs black manhood solely as pathology?"

Keith Boykin
BEYOND THE DOWN LOW
From Chapter Four,
"It's Not Just a Black Thing"

"I believe the recent trend toward demonizing those who are HIV positive for failure to disclose their HIV status sends the wrong signal. It stems from our need to blame other people for our own failures, and it is based in an unhelpful concept of victim-based morality that takes away our personal responsibility and assigns all the blame and puts all the responsibility on those who are HIV positive. Blaming someone else for our own actions will not change our actions, nor will it change the past. By the time you get to the point of blame, you have already passed the point of responsibility."

Keith Boykin
BEYOND THE DOWN LOW
From Chapter Twelve,
"Let's Talk About Sex"

Keith Boykin's heartfelt book BEYOND THE DOWN LOW: SEX, LIES AND DENIAL IN BLACK AMERICA is a scathing critique and passionate love letter to the Black community simultaneously. Simply put, Boykin analyses the structural hypocrisy, denial and irresponsibility that lie at the core of the African-American conversations about class, sex, sexuality, honest communication & true intimacy in relationships, racism and AIDS. It is his profoundly logical belief that these structural hypocrisies--concretized in Black culture by their deification in the fear-based, narcissistic linguistics of much of the Black church--combine with HIV to make any and all spreading of AIDS the seeming epidemic it has become in the Black community--not Black bisexual men in the closet (termed the "Down Low" community of brothers by J.L. King in his book).

Boykin's analyses of the myths in the Black community, those of the dominant culture, the gay subculture in both communities and the immature beliefs regarding honesty, communication and sexual responsibility of many Black women in relationships that Boykin reveals are made more astounding by four things:

1) his actual quoting of Center for Disease Control statistics on HIV and AIDS, the likes of which J.L. King purposely never quotes in his book (for reasons he describes that would have had him sued by King for libel by now if they weren't true)

2) His candid revealing of his life and mores as a gay man and his advocacy for the gay community

3) his blistering critique of both the character and motivation of J.L. King, on the basis of having spoken with him personally on several occasion, and

4) the powerful critique and detailed analysis of the book, ON THE DOWN LOW; a book that Boykin reveals was not actually written by J.L. King, but by a professional Hollywood ghost writer he hired with the express purpose of creating a hysterical media buzz around the topic.

The media hype on the subject of King's product was successfully achieved by this year (when King appeared on Oprah) for the benefit of (what else?) making money on the fears and emotional issues of Black women in particular and the latent racism of white people in general. Nothing sells better than sex...except fear. J.L. King used both to sell his product: ON THE DOWN LOW. Truly, Boykin in BEYOND THE DOWN LOW shows that the whole "On the Down Low" phenomenon has been brought to hysteric proportions in an amazingly short amount of time in the exact same way the Classicist scholar/Reactionary Republican Mary Lefkowitz' uneven, politically biased and scientifically inaccurate critique of Afrocentrism called NOT OUT OF AFRICA did: it combines a topic of emotion-producing complexity (for Lefkowitz: the crisis of integrity in academia and ancient cultural research; for J.L. King: bisexuality in 21st century America) with another simplistic application of the 19th century *Black Buck/crazy Nigga/Mandingo* myth in modern times.

J.L. King's book is still incendiary and important, because it reveals the closet bisexual phenomenon and its actual consequences to people in both the homosexual and heterosexual community (who didn't already know about it), when combined with deceit and HIV. In fact, the only thing that could put ON THE DOWN LOW in its proper context, for the good of the Black community and the world at large, is BEYOND THE DOWN LOW by Keith Boykin.

Read this soon; read it now.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intellectually BRILLIANT, April 17, 2005

By	Anthony Henderson (Little Rock, AR United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Thoughtful, intellectual, compassionate, and soulful describe Keith's Boykin's new book, Beyond The Down Low. The book is filled with interesting examples that support Keith's point that the down low is only new to the cult-like group now embracing it. Many of us have known about the down low long before it became popular. In fact, what is now considered down low is not really that at all -- at least not in the way it was previously used. Back then, no one would ever acknowledge being on the down low -- it would defeat it's purpose.

Using history, politics, and everyday people, Keith inspires us as a culture to look within ourselves enough to open up about HIV/AIDS and the down low. He asks us consider the plight of black gay and bisexual men and how society has groomed the very down low behavior it now condemns.

This book is truly inspirational, and after you finish reading it, you will have grown.