Black Mens Studies. Serie McDougal III
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are always like this. First, they resist and play dumb when there are a lot of things waiting to be done, and then when it happens, they won’t let go either. Children are so full of contradictions. The very experience you reject before with lies, you are now accepting without apology. (Somé, 1994, p. 223)
As the elders claimed, Somé essentially had to overcome what he already knew. How often do we ask questions about Black males and never investigate them because we assume that we already know the answers? How often do questions never get asked because we believe that we already know? We engage in study and research because of our interest in expanding and challenging what we already know—to learn. Like the Dagara initiates, we must acquire new skills and thought processes in order to expand our vision. Similar to Somé’s experience, studying Black men and boys requires learning to see beyond what mainstream society teaches us to see and think.
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It is not possible to be knowledgeable about Black males without developing a certain sight to see the fullness of their humanity. In this text I argue that, like Malidoma Somé looking at the tree as hard as he could, in the American context, most people’s perceptions of Black males are compromised. We do not look at them with the guidance of elders who are present to make sure we see them properly. Like Somé, our vision is distorted by what we already know: knowledge shaped in an institutionally and culturally anti-Black male society. To develop a true awareness of Black male realities, people must wipe their eyes beginning with the acknowledgment of their presumptions or biases. The purpose of this introduction is to identify the key concepts and information that represent bridges and barriers to perceiving and understanding the humanity and personhood of Black men and boys.
At the heart of Africana Studies is the Africalogical perspective which, represents a certain sight, a way of seeing peoples of African descent as self-conscious human beings grounded in unique histories, cultures, and identities. In the current text, this sight will be applied to the exploration of the lives of Black men and boys; how they relate to and influence themselves, others and their environments throughout time (roots, contexts, futures) and space (geography). The approach of this work is informed by Bush and Bush’s (2013) African American male theory, Nobles, Goddard, and Gilbert’s (2009) culturecology theory, and Margarette Beale Spencer’s phenomenological variant of the ecological systems theory.
Seeing the Humanity and Personhood of Black Men and Boys
Seeing Power as a Guidance System for Thought on Black Males
Power-centered or asset-based approaches to studying Black males focus on the examination of strengths, resilience, and success (Bonner, 2014; Howard, 2014; King, 2014; Mitchell & Stewart, 2013). This kind of research is geared toward the development of policy initiatives and successful institutional interventions that lead to positive Black male outcomes. It operates from a position that interventions must be driven by males’ strengths and potential, instead of problems and failures (Howard, 2014).
The opposite of the strengths-based approach is the problem-based approach. When Black males are defined as problems to be solved, what goes missing are their strengths, successes, and solutions that deserve attention, investigation, and expansion. Stereotypes can be a sort of navigational and guidance system for scholarship on Black males. Because researchers are not immune, stereotypes influence their choices of topics, approaches to studying, and the conclusions they reach—reifying longstanding received ideas about Black males. This is sometimes called problem orientation that manifests itself in the tendency for researchers to focus on underachievement, calamity, depravity, deficiency, failure and other dysfunctional patterns of behavior. The tendency to view Black males as problems leads to problem-solving approaches focused on “fixing” Black males instead of examining the social institutions that shape their realities (Howard, 2014). This problem orientation or pathology-driven approach does not emerge in a vacuum; it is a manifestation of the cultural deficit paradigm, the view that Black people in general are an American product alone, with no historical or cultural continuity from Africa as the basis for any unique identity (White & Cones, 1999). Cultural deficit paradigm began with colonial conceptualizations of Black males as childlike, lacking the intelligence, discipline, and values to live up to social expectations (White & Cones, 1999). According to Parham, Ajamu, and White (2011), its proponents cite poor cultural traits as the sources of presumed Black deficiencies. The paradigm emerged from social scientists’ assumption that inadequate exposure and internalization of White American values by many Blacks left them culturally deficient, and in need of cultural enrichment to be properly integrated into society (Parham et al., 2011). Indeed, an additional problem ←xv | xvi→with the cultural deficit perspective is that it reduces Black male culture to a reaction to racist White Eurocentric cultural imposition, rather than preexisting cultural styles independent of forces of cultural assimilation (Kambon, 2006). Politically, the paradigm is used to discourage government social service interventions, positioned as the cause for marginalized families’ failure to teach proper values. The cultural deficit paradigm is known similarly by phrases such as cultural disadvantage and cultural deprivation, which includes the assumption that African American males experience social dilemmas based primarily on their own internal failures, unrelated to social and historical context.
An example of problem orientation is the stereotyping of Black males as hypersexual. Thus, a great deal of recent scholarship on Black male sexuality (Dancy, 2012) has been focused on hypersexuality, which reduces the broader topic of sexuality to conversations about sexual deviance. The supposed legitimacy of this sort of research, just like in stereotypes, is that it draws on something real—but it also greatly exaggerates reality when applied to Black males in general. Deviance is a valid topic, yet because so much of what is known and studied about Black males is fixated on it, the overall body of research on sexuality is like a distortion or carnival mirror which shows us images which exaggerate or diminish parts of who Black males are. The same applies to the great amount of research reasserting age-old notions of Black male hypermasculinity, propensity for violence and criminality, and ignorance. These topics are important, however, the sheer volume of research concentrated in these few problem areas is a reduction of Black male humanity. Black male life is more than these narrow categories, and the scope and depth of what is investigated needs to be broadened. The tendency to focus on problems also creates a poverty of solutions. Although some who conduct research primarily oriented toward Black male crime, drugs and violence may do so to bring attention to important issues, this strategy may ultimately be counterproductive by making service providers (nurses, teachers, psychologists, etc.), more apprehensive and/or apathetic about Black males (Smiley, 2011).
What happens to Black males who do not fit the narrow lens of problem orientation? They are rendered invisible to those who adopt this orientation. For education research, this manifests as a tendency for scholars to focus on underachievement while leaving high-achieving Black males under-researched. Regarding Black fathers, it manifests as a tendency to study father absence, leaving fathers with positive parent–child relationships also an under-researched population. It would be easier to create change and develop solutions if researchers spent more time studying what is working, and why, in the lives of Black men and boys. Solution-oriented research is present, but underdeveloped and underrepresented in the literature on Black males.
In recognizing the challenges that problem-oriented research presents for understanding of African American culture, Majors and Billson (1992) state that “efforts toward broadening research or writing new social policy must be clear about several issues. First, exploring Black responses to oppression must be cast in terms of cultural distinctiveness, not cultural or individual pathology. Second, recognition of cultural distinctiveness cannot be construed as a way to avoid making substantial changes in the structure of our society. And third, social policies and programs must have the full support of all segments of society, not just those who have fallen victim to its fundamental failings” (p. 116). The solution to the deficit paradigm is not to avoid analyzing problem behavior and thinking, but to avoid fixating on them (King, 2014). Ironically, a heavy focus on problem behavior and thinking undercuts the