Black Mens Studies. Serie McDougal III
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studies. Including Black men as subjects in gender studies will help to challenge misguided presumptions about their privilege and widen constructions of Black masculinity. Unfortunately, the scientific community doesn’t know very much about constructions of manhood and masculinity, even though these are directly linked to the quality of Black males’ experiences in social arenas such as education and healthcare (Clarke-Hine & Jenkins, 1999; Hill, 2002; Howard, 2014). This limitation conceptually restricts our understanding of the social/cultural worlds of Black men.
Dominant Narratives in Scholarship on Black Males
What happens when Black men are studied? In scholarly social-science literature, some dominant narratives about Black men have emerged from the 1930s to the present: (1) absent and wandering (absent as fathers and sexually irresponsible); (2) impotent and powerless (mother-centered households); (3) soulful and adaptive (culturally unique, misunderstood, and adaptive to their conditions), and; the current state of the literature on Black males has described them as (4) endangered and in crisis (Brown, 2011). Similarly, contemporary media representations, consistent with scholarship written about Black males, often focus on the negative depictions of Black males as hypersexual, thug, gangster, violent, abusive, unintelligent, and absent fathers (Howard, 2014).
Overgeneralization of Black Men in Scholarship About Black Males
While Black hypermasculinity is often studied, (Chaney, 2014) is one of the few scholars who have studied topics like Black male sensitivity. In contrast to stereotypes of Black male hypermasculinity, measures such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) indicate that Black males score higher than White males on the section of the test that measures femininity (Pettigrew, 1964). Even though evidence only supports identifying a minority of Black males as hypermasculine, violent toward women, and sexually abusive, some gender scholars will make frequent statements about sexist and patriarchal behaviors and attitudes without specifying that such claims only apply to some Black males. These sorts of unscientific yet widespread claims only reinforce and reaffirm age-old stereotypes of Black males as hypersexual and hypermasculine. Spates and Slatton (2014) define the hypermasculine and hypersexual stereotypes as “controlling, socially constructed identities that do not necessarily represent, nor are they unique to, Black men” (p. 4). They also create the false perception that Black Males’ Black maleness itself is innately a problem. An example of this is Manning Marable’s (1994) description of Black males’ inherent sexism in an ironically titled article, “The Black Male: Searching Beyond Stereotypes.” Some gender scholars’ tendency to overgeneralize about Black males and confine discussions of Black male gender identity to Black male patriarchy and sexism reflects a very narrow approach to studying Black male gender realities. For example, some Black feminist scholarship is replete with generalizations about Black males, such as the statement “avowedly heterosexual men belittle gay men because they see gay men as being like women.” (Hill-Collins, 2006, p. 83). If at all, such writings offer only fleeting statements of the mere existence of Black men who are not homophobic.
What are the consequences of pointing out Black male homophobia while erasing males who are not homophobic? Calls for progressive Black masculinity in the future might be fruitless if callers refuse to recognize the presence of progressive masculinities in the present. This is a corollary to the traditional invisibility in scholarly research of Black men who choose to love other men. The scholarly community has limited interest in studying anything about Black males other than patriarchy and ←76 | 77→sexism—and this contradicts calls for more diverse forms of Black masculinity. It is critical that gender scholars broaden their scopes and the types and dimensions of Black male gender identities that they are willing to investigate. If not, their overgeneralized conclusions about narrow Black male gender identities will continue to be inflated by the limited aspects of Black male realities that are engaged. The starting point for understanding Black manhood and masculinities is historical context.
Many gender scholars make frequent generalizations about Black males as patriarchal and sexist, with few references to empirical evidence (Dancy, 2012; Hill-Collins, 2004). Although scientific data are systematically ignored and rendered invisible in such generalizations, survey data capture more nuance than is acknowledged by feminist dichotomies about Black male identities, i.e., males are either progressive or hypermasculine. In fact, while 58% of White men believe that sexism is a social problem, 78% of Black men do (Morris, 2014). Instead of investigating and providing an explanation for significant differences like these, liberal uses of terms such as hypermasculine aid gender scholars in blurring the lines between masculinity/manhood and hegemonic or hypermasculinity and hegemonic manhood. These terms can be defined so broadly that Black males are not allowed healthy forms of forcefulness; aggression and assertiveness are perceived as hyper-aggressive and hyper-assertive while being reserved and calm are perceived as passive and weak. The result is a tendency to pathologize Black manhood and masculinity as intrinsically problematic in terms of patriarchy and sexism, especially heterosexual manhood and masculinities.
Black Feminism and Advocacy for Progressive Black Masculinity
Some Black feminists assert that Black male oppression does not explain the nature of the oppression faced by the entire Black community. They make the point that Black women’s oppression goes beyond White racism, and includes sexism which Black men participate in. However, many Black feminist scholars have been reluctant to apply race, gender, and also class analysis to the experiences of Black men (Mutua, 2006b). The theory of intersectionality has been primarily applied to the lives of Black women, while it is assumed that Black men are oppressed by race and privileged by gender (Mutua, 2006b). However, Black male lives are more complex than the simplicity of this axiom acknowledges, and they are indeed affected by a gendered type of racism. The gendered racism Black males face affects their sense of manhood and masculinity via lowering their sense of self-control, restricting their agency, and provoking antisocial behavior (Wilson, 1991). Spencer, Dupree, Cunningham, Harpalani, and Munoz-Miller (2003) explain that issues of race and gender identity interact to create unique experiences of stress and dissonance for Black males. Within the U.S. criminal justice system, the disproportionality and bias that African American males experience is caused in part by the intersection of race (Black) and gender (male) (Weatherspoon, 2014). Some scholars explain the saying that mothers “love” their sons and “raise” their daughters is an indication that parents see their daughters as more capable and independent than their sons (Belgrave & Brevard, 2015). Some assert that African American mothers emasculate their sons by expecting more of their daughters (i.e., academic excellence) and being overprotective of their sons (Kunjufu, 1986; Hill-Collins, 1991). However, others explain that both mothers and fathers recognize that their sons face unique race-gendered experiences, putting them at higher levels of risk for incarceration and violence, and lowering societal expectations (Harrison-Hale, 2002). Some parents react to this recognition by being protective of sons in a more restrictive way that can increase parent–son conflict (Harrison-Hale, 2002). Reflecting on her clinical experience in family counseling, Boyd-Franklin (2003) asserts that many African American parents express a great deal of fear and concern for the basic survival of their sons that transcends socioeconomic issues, fueled by police brutality, discrimination, Black-on-Black crime, and violence. This affects parents’ efforts to find solutions such as locating positive male role models to support the gender socialization of their sons.
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Some Black feminist scholarship and men’s studies scholarship have made a trend of omitting Black men from the struggle for gender equity and against sexism. Conversely, Byrd and Guy-Sheftall’s (2001) text, Traps, dispels the notion that Black men have not supported and advocated for the ideals of Black feminists. They define sexism and homophobia as ideological traps into which we have all fallen. Their work demonstrates that Black men have a long history of challenging sexism. Some scholars have engaged in a selective reconstruction of Black men’s history relative to gender equity, erasing Black male engagement with gender equality. Harnois (2014) provides a more contemporary analysis of current survey-based data which indicate Black men recognize and are critical of gender inequality at rates similar to those of Black women. Harnois recognizes that in the research community, the Black male voice is positioned as inherently untrustworthy,