San Francisco Research[1]

San Francisco’s Regional Research Contribution Rafael M. Diaz. Ph.D. Director, Cesar E. Chavez Institute San Francisco State University The City of San Francisco San Francisco is a well-known international tourist destination on account of its Victorian architecture, fine-cuisine restaurants, and beautiful natural setting by the bay. The city’s strongest and well-deserved reputation, however, is as a safe and welcoming haven for sexual and gender minorities. San Francisco boasts one of the oldest and most active gay neighborhoods in the world (the Castro) and hosts what is perhaps the largest gay pride parade in the world where bare-breasted women on motorcycles (locally known as “dykes on bikes”) march along bearded men dressed as nuns (Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence), together with political figures and the young children of recently married lesbian and gay couples. The city also hosts the annual Folsom Street Fair, sponsored by practitioners of Sado-Masochism (S&M) where it is customary for city officials to attend or send greetings and endorsements addressed to members of what is known as the “leather community.” Mayor Newsom’s open defiance of federal and state laws last year allowing the marriage of hundreds of same-sex couples was quite congruent with the city spirit of acceptance and celebration of sexual diversity. A few years earlier, then Mayor Brown “officiated” in a mass ceremony that celebrated the union of same-sex couples in domestic partnership arrangements, defiantly calling the city “The People’s Republic of San Francisco.” San Francisco’s residents and government officials have systematically and proudly celebrated sexual diversity embracing as normative what is considered sexually transgressive in the majority of other US locations. The celebration of racial diversity in the city, on the other hand, has been more subtle and problematic. While ethnic minorities now in fact constitute the majority of the population in many California cities, including San Francisco, ethnic minority groups continue to be over-represented in poverty and incarceration rates, school dropouts, and in the prevalence of many preventable diseases, including HIV/AIDS. In the city, racial “segregation” of neighborhoods and establishments is common, with Latinos and African American living in working class neighborhood that are considered predominantly Black (e.g., Bayview Hunters’ Point) or predominantly Latino (The Mission). In addition, the recent dramatic rise in housing prices has pushed many ethnic minorities out of lowincome housing and created racial tensions in traditionally ethnic neighborhoods. Similarly, many social establishments are overtly identified by the particular ethnic/racial groups that patronize them. In the gay community, complaints of racial discrimination are common by gay men of color who often report feeling uncomfortable in predominantly white gay bars or clubs. A recent protest was held in the Castro against a local popular gay bar that, according to protesters, systematically asked multiple identifications of men of color at the entrance while allowing white patrons enter without any identification at all. Men of color are often sexually objectified in the media as well

as in sex clubs in ways that are blatantly racist; this, and other racial tensions in the gay community, have prompted the emergence of numerous organizations of gay men of color that aim to fight racism in the gay community. It is clear that San Francisco will be a fruitful and productive setting to study the interaction of race, sex and gender and we are delighted to be asked to be part of this important collaboration. Research Objectives As a regional partner of the transnational proposal, the research to be conducted in San Francisco will focus on the intersection of race, sexuality, and gender, as it is perceived, understood, spoken about, and practiced by young (ages 18-24) men and women in the city. Beyond ethnographic observations of venues where young men and women socialize, we will conduct in-depth and close-ended interviews with both male and female, heterosexual and homosexual, young men and women who self-identify as African American, Latino or White. While African-American and Latino participants will be selected by ethnic/racial self-identification, we expect that participants will vary in skin color and facial features along a continuum of European “whiteness” to African and indigenous “blackness.” The impact of position along such continuum on participants’ lives (e.g., on sexual and affective/romantic partnering) will become the subject of investigation for comparative purposes. All research participants will be USborn given that an exploration of the particular issues encountered by Latin American immigrants in the US, while important to the topic under investigation, is beyond the scope of the present proposal. Our main objective is to contribute to the transnational effort by providing both comparable and contrasting data on how US racial/ethnic categories, sexual and racial self-identification, and experiences of racism impact the sexual, social and civic lives of young people in a city that -- similar to Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town -- is characterized by the normalization of sexual transgression. The San Francisco research design and interview protocols will be open to dialogue and input from the different regional partners in order to maximize the comparability of our observations within the transnational collaborative. An important topic of investigation for the San Francisco site will be to examine the relation among sexuality, race and HIV infection, given the high prevalence of HIV in the city and the fact that HIV/AIDS is disproportionately prevalent in communities of color. Research Program The first step of the research program involves mapping the most prominent social venues where African-American, Latino, and White young people interact for socializing, flirting, and potential sexual partnering (i.e., “cruising”) in the city of San Francisco. We will focus particularly on those settings that are not ethnically/racially identified (e.g., a Latino salsa dance hall or an African-American hip-hop club) but rather, we will focus on clubs and social spaces where participation and intermingling of different racial groups is the norm. The major reason for such selection of venues is that we want to focus our

attention on young people that do socially and (potentially) sexually interact with other racial groupings, rather than participants whose social and sexual networks are ethnically and racially homogeneous. After mapping all potential venues, we will select four social venues (two predominantly heterosexual, one predominantly gay male, and one predominantly lesbian) to be observed. For the first three months of the project, three graduate student ethnographers from Human Sexuality and/or Ethnic Studies programs at San Francisco State University (SFSU) will conduct a minimum of 10 hours of participant observation in each of the settings, for a total of 40 hours of observation. The 10 hours of observation will be distributed in at least three visits per setting. Under the guidance and supervision of the SF project’s principal investigator (R.M. Diaz), field notes will be written immediately after each visit to the venue. During the following six months, we will recruit and interview six young persons from each of the four selected venues (total N=24), so that we have 2 research participants for each of the 12 cells created by the interaction of gender (2: male/female) x sexual orientation (2: heterosexual/homosexual) x race/ethnicity (African American/Latino/White). Study participants will be recruited in the context of the informal social interactions with the student ethnographers who will continue more informal visits to the selected venues during recruitment/interviewing months; however, student ethnographers will be instructed to select participants who would qualify as adequate “informants” according to criteria determined by the international collaborative research team. With those informants who so consent in writing, a two-hour formal in-depth, semistructured interview will be conducted at a safe interview space at the Cesar Chavez Institute (CCI), a community-based research facility of SFSU, directed by R.M. Diaz (see www.sfsu.edu/~cci). The CCI is strategically and conveniently located in the multiethnic Mission district of San Francisco with easy access to public transportation. The Institute has comfortable, inviting, and warmly decorated interview rooms where interviews can be audio taped for future transcription and analysis. After each interview, participants will be given a paper-and-pencil self-administered “exit” interview with close-ended questions. Each participant will be paid a modest stipend for their participation in the in-depth and exit interviews. Each participant will then be given a set of 5 additional exit interviews with self-addressed stamped envelopes, and will be encouraged to distribute the interviews to friends who are similar in age and racial/ethnic self-identification. If we obtain on average 2 returned self-administered interviews per participant, we will have a total of (24x3) 72 close-ended interviews that will allow us to contextualize the ethnographic and qualitative data collected in the project. The specific questions for the interview protocols will be determined in dialogue among all regional sites in the collaborative. However, we anticipate that both in-depth and close-ended questions will be of three types: 1) a set of questions that will be identical in all regional sites; 2) a set of questions that will be similar but adapted and tailored to the specific situation of each regional site; and 3) a region-specific set of questions that address unique site-specific realities and situations.

Proposed Budget Cesar E. Chavez Institute San Francisco State University Two­Year Budget PERSONNEL YEAR I Rafael Diaz, PhD In-Kind Project Principal Investigator Miguel Casuso, Data Manager 4,700 FTE .10 ($47,000 annual salary) Fringe Rate 40% 1,880 Student Research Assistants 9,500 Year I (3) students/$14 hr./678 hrs. Year II (2) students/$14 hr./214 hrs. Fringe Rate 12% 1,140 17,220 Total Personnel

YEAR II In-Kind

TOTAL In­Kind

4,700

9,400

1,880 3,000

3,760 12,500

360 9,940

1,500 27,160

OTHER THAN PERSONNEL Participant Stipends 24 interviews $50 each ($1,200) 100 questionnaires $20 each ($2,000) Research Venue Entry Fees Supplies, Telephone, Postage & Printing Transcription Services Computer Workstation Total Other Than Personnel

3,200

-0-

3,200

100 1,800 7,500 2,000 14,600

-01,195 2,500 -03,695

100 2,995 10,000 2,000 18,295

Total Direct Expenses

31,820

13,635

45,455

Indirect (10%)

3,182 35,002

1,363 14,998

4,545 50,000

TOTAL REQUEST