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Adolescent sexual behavior has been the subject of much concern over the past 15 years. Pregnancy and childbirth rates among unmarried adolescents increased to epidemic proportions during the 1980s. These trends, though are sometimes attributed to the changing sexual patterns among White adolescents, continue to show that Blacks have disproportionate representation with regards to early sexual onset, pregnancy, and childbirths. Moreover, Black adolescent females become sexually active, on average, age 14.4 years, compared to 16.3 years for their White female ( Zelnik & Shah, 1983). Demographers have predicted that 40 percent of all 14-year-olds in the United States will become pregnant before their twentieth birthday and that Blacks will be disproportionately represented in these statistics (Lancaster & Hamburg, 1986). Given these patterns, a few researchers have begun to unravel the significance of race and class in understanding the sexual behavior patterns of American youth. What follows is a brief overview of the sexuality literature with specific emphasis on Black American adolescent females. In this paper I will focus on: (1) methodological issues inherent in this field of research, (2) determine whether the characterization is/was an over generalization of the phenomenon, and (3) provide a basis for the need to view sexuality as a developmental process, rather than focusing only on risk taking behaviors. Methodological Issues In recent years, some researchers have argued that many of the findings regarding Black-White differences in sexual activity can be attributed to sampling bias. That is, the majority of studies on Black adolescent females tend to be based on data obtained from nonprobability, and convenient clinical samples of low-income youth. Informatio