Black Masculinity Revisited

1
Black Masculinity Revisited

• AS/HUMA 1300 9.0
• Faculty of Arts

2
Black Masculinity Revisited

• 1. Black Men and a Historical Legacy of
• Failure
• 2. Black men in Contemporary Canada
• and the United States
• 3. Rethinking Black Men and the
• Family

3
You aint shit. Just like your Daddy.
4
Frantz Fanon

• My body was given back to me sprawled out,
• distorted, recolored, clad in mourning in that
  white
• winter day. The Negro is an animal, the Negro is
• bad, the Negro is mean, the Negro is ugly look a
  
• nigger, its cold, the nigger is shivering. . . .
  The
• handsome little boy is trembling because he
  thinks
• the nigger is quivering with rage, the little boy
  
• throws himself into his mothers arms Mama, the
• niggers going to eat me up (Black Skin, White
• Masks 114).

5
White Male Heterosexual Norm

• Primary Indicators
• of Manhood
• 1. Whiteness
• 2. Economic Power
• 3. Political Power
• 4. Ability to Protect
• Family
• 5. Ability to control
• all women

• Secondary Indicators
• of Manhood
• 1. Physical Strength
• 2. Virility

6
Stereotypes of Black Masculinity

• SAMBO
• Attack on black mens economic and political
• powerlessness and their lack of power in the
• family domainblack masculinity erased
• BUCK
• Fear of black male strength and virility
• Physical threat to white men and sexual
• threat to white women
• COON
• Laughs at inability of black men to gain social
• and political power after slavery.

7
Edwin Larwell (1849-1850)

• Property values would fall because blacks being
  
• lazy, would let their farms run down. Crime would
  
• increase . . . .Blacks would try to marry white
  girls,
• with the result that a mongrel population would
  be
• produced and the pure white race would be
  degraded.
• Blacks would be able to vote, and before they
  knew it
• whites would find a black man sitting in the
  legislature
• making laws that whites would have to obey. The
• humiliation was too much . . . (qtd. In Walker,
  History
• of Blacks in Canada 80).

8
Black Men as US Statistics

• Less than 8 of African American men graduate
  from college
• compared to 17 of whites and 35 of Asians.
• Young African American men die at a rate that is
  at least 1.5 times
• the rate of young white and Hispanic men, and
  almost 3 times the
• rate of young Asian men.
• The leading cause of death is homicide, which for
  young African
• American men is 3 times the rate for Hispanics,
  the population
• group with the second highest homicide rate.
• In 2002, among males ages 25 to 29, 12.9 of
  blacks were in
• prison or jail, compared to 4.3 of Hispanics and
  about 1.6 of
• whites
• 1.46 million black men out of a total voting
  population of 10.4
• million have lost their right to vote due to
  felony convictions
• Economic downturn hits black men
  hardestemployment among

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Black men in Contemporary Canada

• Among visible minority groups, there is a
• significant wage disadvantage for black men
• 16.6 for immigrants and 25.6 for those
• native born. . . .In particular, we note that,
• among native born Canadians only black men
• appear to have a disadvantage (Hum and
• Simpson, Earnings and Employment of
• Visible Minority Immigrants 2000).

10
Structural Functional Definition of Family

• Nuclear Adult heterosexual couple and their
  young children
• Co-resident (preferably married)
• Patriarchal

11
Contesting Three Dominant Theories

• Kinship relations outside of the nuclear family
  are abnormal and dysfunctional
• The absence of black men in the household
  proves their irresponsibility
• Black men are marginal to the home and family.