Black Mens Studies. Serie McDougal III
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builds on both Dancy’s (2012) and Howard’s (2014) periodization of Black manhood via more expansive descriptions, and Afrocentric analysis. The first period consists of indigenous African conceptualizations of manhood before the European slave trade in the Atlantic Ocean. Many scholars have failed to examine this period and make claims that Black manhood concepts and identities emerged only after slavery (Johns, 2007). However, rituals and customs at each stage in men’s life cycle inculcated African males with specific worldviews. Different African societies had clear understandings of manhood and cultural mechanisms to pass those meanings down from one generation to the next. One theme in many African societies is their creation of a series of rituals and steps designed to facilitate healthy and functional progression toward manhood (Rosier, 2011). For boys, elders constructed trials and tasks to complete in controlled environments so they might understand manhood (Rosier, 2011). These rites of passage started from early childhood to late adolescence and continued with marriage and funeral rites. Children were guided through and supported during these processes by elders, biological family members, extended-family members, and entire villages or communities. Males in pre-colonial African societies generally emerged from rites, rituals, and social institutions with an understanding of the values, beliefs, philosophies, and ideals associated with manhood. These were typically elements of overall African worldviews, including but not limited to complex interactions of spirituality, collective identity, responsibility to family and community, physical prowess, husbandhood, fatherhood, honor to the supreme being, respect/honor for the ancestors, courage, discipline, leadership, brotherhood, warrior-hood, respect for and harmony with nature, knowledge of ethnic history and wisdom, intelligence, skills/crafts, and respect for elders.
One of the central features of pre-colonial African conceptualizations of gender is the perception of male and female as complimentary divine principles of humanity (Ani, 1994; Nobles, 2006; T’Shaka, 1995). In ancient Kemet, male and female principles are manifestations of divine inclusiveness, together representing humanity in its wholeness (Karenga, 2010a). Karenga (2010a) explains they are “equal possessors of dignity and divinity” (p. 269). Yet, in addition to complementarity, pre-colonial African ←58 | 59→cosmologies also involved more fluid definitions and expressions of gender (Nzegwu, 2003; Oyewumi, 2002), which privileged relationships and spirituality in ways distinct from Western bio-logic which emphasizes physical characteristics and behaviors. For example, in the ceremonies of Ifa and Vodun spirituality, male spiritual deities may mount (possess) women and female deities can mount men, blurring rigid gender lines since both male and female represent divine principles (Michel & Daniels, 2009). Contrarily, discussions of complementary relationships in African philosophy need not idealize the past as a place where self-realization for both men and women were unconstrained (Cornwall & IAI, 2005). However, interrogating pre-colonial African thought does provide the cultural reference point for framing the unique social structures and gender relations in contemporary African and African diasporic societies. According to T’Shaka (1995), in Western thought, the female principle has been alienated from the masculine as compared to pre-colonial African thought and family systems.
The next era of Black manhood is post-transplantation antebellum America. African men brought their cultural identities and understandings to the New World. However, they were physically separated from their African contexts. Black men’s traditional roles as husbands, fathers, providers, and protectors of their communities were transformed by oppression, but men managed to fulfill these roles through persistence, creativity, resistance, and resilience. Black (1997) claims that Black men were severed from their cultures and their manhood. But this claim is contradicted by the record of resilient and resistant Black manhood. Black (1997) asserts there were many Black men who looked upon their masters with resentment and envied their power. However, many Black men rejected their captors and resisted them in unrelenting fashion. History has highlighted the former and cast a shadow on the latter.
The traditional view of enslaved Black males was that they were passive beings, completely controlled by their masters (White & Cones, 1999). It was not until the 1960s that a significant number of scholars began to describe Black men during slavery as resisting the effects of slavery in unique cultural and political ways. Lussana (2016) challenges the emasculated Black male thesis by documenting the ways that Black males continued to be providers, nurturers, and protectors during slavery. He investigates Black males’ homosocial worlds, including the rituals and rites of manhood that they created among themselves, and their overall sense of brotherhood. He also explores the forms of day-to-day resistance they used to challenge their subjugation, support their families and struggle for freedom. Lastly, Lussana (2016) engages Black males’ organization and participation in overt and collective politics of resistance.
Mainstream American views of Black men are one-sided. Scholars such as Elkins (1968) explain how Whites had total control over the lives of Black people for the duration of their lives. This position proclaims that Black males were stripped of their roles as protectors and providers of their families and communities (Neal, 2005). White men and women could break up Black families at will and arbitrarily sexually assault Black men (and more so Black women) at any time. These accounts of slavery present Black men as believing in their own inferiority and attempting to emulate their oppressors. This model of enslaved Black men denies that they carried with them any psycho-cultural thoughts and behavioral patterns from native cultures in Africa (White & Cones, 1999). But the truth of these realities cannot be denied, although as Booker (2000) explains, there was a range of responses to enslavement—from servility and acquiescence to rebellion, lethal retaliation and all points in-between.
It was during this post-transplantation antebellum period that Black men were subjected to White supremacy and White male patriarchy. According to Staples (2006), due to Black males being called and treated as boys for centuries, masculinity is very important to their collective identity. White men considered adult Black males to be like children. During slavery, there was a constant effort to instill within them traits such as weakness, docility, and ignorance (Dancy, 2012). During the Civil War, a White abolitionist, Thomas Wentworth Higgins, was appointed the commander of a regiment of Black ←59 | 60→male soldiers. Wentworth commented on why he liked the Black men in his regiment saying, “I think it is partly from my own notorious love for children that I like these people so well” (Litwack, 1979, p. 69). In racist Eurocentric ideology, Black men were often not considered human, thus manhood for them, was impossible (Franklin, 1994a). In the Eurocentric mind, the Black male gender role was seen as the following dimensions: the Black male as property (to be owned, bought, and sold); the Black male as submissive (fearful and compliant); the Black male as non-protective (no ability to protect the lives of his family); the Black male as powerless (little voice in determining his destiny); and the Black male as stud supreme (expected to be a strong and hard worker, and breeder) (Franklin, 1994a). Black males were forbidden from assuming so-called traditional masculine gender roles (owners, providers, leaders, and thinkers) by Whites (Hoston, 2014). Although social scientists like Hoston (2014) and Dancy (2012) assert that Black manhood and masculinity were prevented, it is important to understand how Black males resisted attempts to negate their manhood and masculinity (Clarke-Hine & Jenkins, 1999).
The Eurocentric ideology about the meaning of Black manhood was a myth. Perhaps too many scholars have bought the notion that Black males had no gender role or could not exercise manhood during slavery. The route to manhood was decidedly more supported for White males, whose competition was limited by suppressing Black manhood and masculinity. Yet, Black men learned to employ skill, intelligence, flexibility, malleability, humility, and determination to maintain their manhood, humanity, and to achieve goals (Booker, 2000). Black men risked life and limb to continue and adapt African conceptions of manhood in creative ways, in the American context. The manhood values of collective effort, resistance, and pride, carried forth from the ancestors, put Black males at severe risk during slavery (Franklin, 2004). These values and efforts conflicted with White expectations. Whites saw Black masculinity as a threat and continuously made conscious efforts to suppress it (Black, 1997). For example, Whites generally denied leadership and authority to Black males unless it served White interests. They destroyed families and brotherhood by creating divisions among the enslaved based on things such as skin color and labor. Actions were taken to violate and limit men’s ability to protect their families, such as dividing families and raping Black women. Whites created stereotypical images