'The Power to Say Yes': A Feminist Approach to the Examination of Black Students' Perceptions of Negotiating Sexual Consent in Casual Sex Encounters at a Historically Black College or University (HBCU)

The purpose of this study is to examine Black students' perceptions of how they negotiate sexual consent on a Historically Black University. Research that focuses on sexual consent in terms of a means of prevention and awareness of sexual assault does not consider in how ethnicity or race factors into how students negotiate sexual consent. These studies assume that all audiences have the same working definition of sexual consent. With sexual assault on college campuses still rising, there seems to be a disconnect in the area that educational programs are covering. This study takes a qualitative approach to examine how students perceive their own negotiations of sexual consent based on their own experiences. The 20 in-depth interviews focus on how family and peer messages influence how students define sexual consent, and how they communicate about casual sex and sexual consent with their friends and family. The thematic analysis was conducted to apply how the different themes spoke to Coordinated Management of Meaning (Pearson & Cronen, 1980) and Black feminist thought (Hill Collins, 2000). Specifically, Black feminist thought seeks to examine the gender dynamics between female and male students as well as what emerges from these themes of how Black culture influences these gender dynamics in the negotiation of sexual consent. Fourteen themes emerged from the data collection. Each theme related to the various aspects and dimensions of sexual consent and casual sex in terms of negotiations, messages received from family and peers, including messages received from peers at campus events. The results of the study show a cultural difference in the prediction of how Black students communicate about sexual consent as predicted by the literature. The goal is to understand how their perceptions of sexual consent can impact how prevention and awareness techniques are incorporated on a college campus for Black students.