Examining Media Representations of Black Manhood

Chapter 6 considers the “heroes” of Black boys and identifies some of the current and historical messages from entertainment media, with a particular focus on hip-hop and R&B music. The film industry is also discussed as a potential site where positive messaging can occur. The need to defend these heroes is examined, and discussion of their faults is presented as a window for having difficult conversations with boys. Informed by the social-ecological model, the chapter closes by asking about the appropriate standards to which celebrities should be held and challenging the reader to fill the moral voids vacated by media figures.

“The Epitome of Black Masculinity”: Isaac Hayes, Black Moses, and the Long Freedom Struggle

Isaac Hayes provides a vital public figure through which scholars can analyze, evaluate, and more fully understand the comprehensive nature of the black freedom struggle as it progressed into the 1970s. Hayes merged the integrationist political objectives of mainstream civil rights organizations and leaders with the notions of racial pride, assertiveness, and autonomy that characterized the popular appeal of the black power movement. Hayes, through his “Black Moses” persona and LP of the same name, moved those freedom struggle promises and opportunities into the cultural realm, where he personified African American artistic self-determination. In doing so, he demonstrated that the contemporary conceptualization of black masculinity was not monolithic, as Hayes introduced and embodied an ideal that countered the prevailing notion of black manhood which pervaded popular culture and remains a central component of popular memory concerning black power. Most importantly, Isaac Hayes embodied a model of black masculinity that contradicted the prevailing “black macho” ideal. “Black Moses,” therefore, embodied the freedom of African Americans to move beyond contemporary racial classifications in a cultural capacity and presents scholars with an intriguing model through which to examine the evolution, possibilities, and accomplishments of the post-1960s American black freedom struggle.

Becoming a Man: A Duboisian Examination of the Experiences of Black Men Who Have Sex with Men

W.E.B. Du Bois developed a thesis on the formation of Black manhood that includes key characteristics of this identity and dynamics that can foster or undermine its development. Yet his framework does not directly reference sexual minorities. Is Du Bois’ thesis relevant today for Black men who have sex with men (BMSM)? Do they espouse similar traits and experience similar challenges? Are their masculinity tropes nuanced based on racial, gender, and/or sexual identities? Informed by a New Millennium Du Boisian Mode of Inquiry and qualitative analyses, this study considers whether and how key aspects of Du Bois’ understanding of the formation of Black manhood are evident among 168 BMSM who reside in the South. Moving beyond a focus on HIV/AIDS for this demographic, the article notes that three themes emerge linked to embracing, essentializing, and extending Du Bois’ thesis on Black manhood that illustrate whether and how his views on Black masculinity are apparent and relevant among Black men excluded from his original work.

The Man-Not and the Inapplicability of Intersectionality to the Dilemmas of Black Manhood

This essay argues against the proposal that Tommy J. Curry’s The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood be read as a work of intersectionality. It argues that such a proposal amounts to a misjudgment of the overarching philosophical significance of the text. As Curry insists, intersectionality is inapplicable to the dilemmas of Black manhood because it does not consider the suffering, sexual discrimination, and death of Black males. Thus, this essay concludes that a more accurate reading of the text should be as a prolegomenon to a new schema focused on the complex systems of Black male victimization in the United States—“The Theory of Phallicism.”

“I See Death Around the Corner”: Black Manhood and Vulnerability in Me Against the World

This essay uses Tupac Shakur’s Me Against the World as a case study examining how Black male artists use hip-hop music for articulating the racialized vulnerability organizing their manhood. By thinking about how Shakur understands his Black maleness through his social relationality to the world around him, Shakur’s album creates resistive space for defining Black maleness despite how Black masculinity is often defined and imposed on Black men. Shakur’s album maps a relational network for understanding a brand of Black manhood obscured by dominant discourses about Black men and their masculinity. Specifically, Shakur’s album frames Black maleness through poverty and how it orients Black men, his perpetual susceptibility to harm and death, and suicide ideation as a response to his despair. Connecting Black maleness and vulnerability, Shakur’s album offers insight about being Black and male in a patriarchal White supremacist society.

Gospel Drag

Gender has been under-theorized within studies of people of African descent. This problem has led to the misunderstanding, suppression, and exclusion of transgendered and gender non-conforming people's experiences and identities within research on black sexuality, including black queer sexuality. This problem has been especially egregious in the burgeoning scholarship on black masculinity that has ignored black female and transmale masculinities that challenge the very ontological conceptions of black manhood upon which this scholarship is based. Black transgender and gender non-conforming people have created and continue to fashion a myriad of strategies to construct their identities in various positional relationships to binary gender and sexual categories. Performance has been a means through which these strategies are enacted. Bailey and Richardson interrogate African American gender common sense as demonstrated in dominant institutions of the black mega church and historically black colleges and universities, impact our understanding of trans- or non-conforming masculinities. They also examine how Ballroom and drag culture (and other gender queer communities) allow for and facilitate the construction of both hegemonic and alternative embodiments of masculinities.