Black Mens Studies. Serie McDougal III
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that Black psychologists have long recommended for Black males to avoid White norms and definitions of maleness. They recommend avoiding the aspects of Euro-American masculine ideals that place excessive emphasis on power, dominance, competitiveness, individualism, and control. White and Cones (1999) identify four reasons why it is psychologically unhealthy for Black males to heedlessly follow the Euro-American masculine style. First, extreme individualism and emotional suppression are likely to cause internal conflict in the African American community, which has a culture that emphasizes collectivism and emotional expressiveness. Second, given barriers such as racism and poverty, extreme emphasis on materialism can cause frustration. Third, acting out frustrated masculinity through sexual conquest and violence will have negative consequences for one’s self and others while confirming stereotypes. Fourth, emulating Euro-American masculine ideals means identifying with the same lifestyle that resulted in the enslavement and the continued oppression of Black people.
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Black men who adopt Euro-American masculinity do so with the added challenge of racial/gender oppression, and without White male privilege (Franklin, 1994b; Majors, Tyler, Peden, & Hall, 1994). Some compensate for this lack of power and privilege by adopting dysfunctional norms and values which may work in some respects and some contexts but are ultimately self-destructive. Some Black males may engage in sexism as a way of attempting to restore or assert manhood. This too is ultimately self-destructive because it reinforces the very anti-Black-male stereotypes (hypermasculine/sexual) that comprise the ideology used to justify Black oppression (Kimmel, 2006). Similarly, Wilson (1991) argues that under the constraints of oppression, a minority of Black males adopt a reactionary masculinity or self-defeating and destructive definitions and expressions of masculinity. Some of the self-destructive characteristics are:
• Lacking a sense of social responsibility or social interest
• Lacking a deep and abiding African identity and consciousness
• Exhibiting an impoverished empathy for others
• Tending toward rigid and excessive self-interests, self-centeredness, self-service, intolerance, and stubbornness
• Tending to be opinionated and to view every social encounter as a test to masculinity and a struggle for power
• Mistakenly identifying physicality and crudeness as masculinity
• Viewing domination, insensitivity, unconcern, willingness to injure or kill, and seeking revenge as essential masculine traits
• Motivated primarily by fear, avoidance, escape, retreat from responsibility, ego-defense, and reactionary frustration by a deep and ever-present sense of inadequacy, an inferiority complex, and an obsessive need to appear superior
• Perceiving cooperation with other males, submitting to the rightful authority of other males, conceding “points” to other males and relating to them, as humiliating insults to masculinity
• Believing the mastery of knowledge, crafts, academic subject matter, professional expertise, and the actualization of intellectual potential to be essentially feminine
• Is a conspicuous consumer, consumer-oriented, concerned mainly with parasitically exploiting others, working merely to earn “spending money,” i.e., money to use irresponsibly, or “into” flashy clothes, cars, fads, and styles of all types
• Motivated and defined by self-alienation, exhibiting an absence of self-knowledge, ignorance of his ethnic heritage, unbounded hedonism, narcissistic drives, deep insecurities regarding the reality of his masculinity and of his masculine courage
• Lacking self-control, discipline, persistence, having low frustration tolerance, and lacking long-term goals and commitment to prosocial values
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Evading Black Male Vulnerability
Unlike much of the scholarship on Black males, Wilson’s (1991) research makes it clear that the features of hypermasculinity characterize a minority of Black males. Yet, some gender studies scholars distort and misrepresent Wilson’s (1991) description of reactionary masculinity as the norm for Black males, while the majority of Black males who do not share this combination of characteristics are thought to be anomalies—this is inaccurate and sexist/racist (Franklin, 1994b).
Hypermasculinity and Hypervulnerability
Even though the language of hypermasculinity emerged as an attempt to reduce Black males to aggressive brutes and to satisfy White fantasies about them, some social scientists continue to use this language to explain Black male thought and behavior. Belgrave and Brevard (2015) explain that hypermasculinity, an exaggerated form of masculinity, is a coping mechanism shaped by adolescent males’ exposure to low-resourced, high-crime neighborhoods. Scholars like Wilson (1991) identify characteristics like being tough and insensitive, and associating aggressive physicality with masculinity as destructive. However, it must be noted that often males assume these characteristics situationally in dangerous environments to protect themselves from being victims of violence themselves. Some of these negative characteristics are functional in the sense that males may have the real or perceived belief that being too weak or soft may make them excessively vulnerable to danger. Some displays of hypermasculinity may be masking a sense of hypervulnerability or vulnerability to danger due to living in chaotic, disorganized neighborhoods and/or the ongoing experience of pervasive racial oppression (Belgrave & Brevard, 2015). What’s more, hypervulnerability is linked to depression, feelings of rejection, and aggression among boys (Cassidy & Stevenson, 2005).
The vulnerability Black males experience is related to the legacy of slavery and anti-Black-male oppression. DeGruy (2005) adds that present-day anger, rage, and sometimes violence among males is related to the persistent attack on Black manhood since slavery. Given the hundreds of years of slavery, Jim Crow, White supremist organizations, lynching, and police brutality, DeGruy (2005) feels there should be no surprise that Black males sometimes perceive minor slights as attacks on their very core. Although 93% of both Black and White men report that feeling respected is important, more Black men (26%) than White men (15%) report that they are often treated with less respect than others (Morris, 2014). Similarly, Wade and Rochlen (2013) report that Black men feel the need to gain respect or status more than White American men do.
Popular Scholarship About Black Males and Gender
In U.S. culture, according to Griffith et al. (2012), masculinity tends to be studied in four basic areas: (1) male norms refers to the extent to which males agree with the dominant culture’s norms of masculinity; (2) masculine concepts and ideologies refers to the extent to which males believe they can fulfill stereotypically masculine roles; (3) gender role conflict or stress assesses beliefs about being a male and whether one endorses the masculine norms and values, and; (4) machismo is the extent to which one endorses hypermasculine characteristics versus nurturing and family-centered ones. However, Griffith et al. (2012) point out some key limitations of such studies of masculinities: the way that masculinity and manhood develop over time is often ignored; there tends to be a focus on less desirable aspects of manhood and masculinity; there tends to be a lack of investigation of the role that structural and institutional factors play, and limited types of masculinity are explored (Griffith et al., 2012).
Black Males are Underrepresented Through the Lens of Gender
Race-gender bias has also skewed the current body of literature in gender studies such that most research focuses on the experiences of women or White males (Spates & Slatton, 2014). Historians ←75 | 76→and social scientists have all too frequently failed to use gender as a category of analysis in studying the lives of Black males (Lussana, 2016). Clarke-Hine and Jenkins (1999) explain that historians have shown a great deal of interest in Black men but have lacked any clearly defined gender perspective. According to Hopkins (2002), too many people still think of gender as a women’s concern. Indeed, gender and women’s studies emerged, in part, as a response to the exclusion and subordination of