Black Masculinity Revisited

1
Black Masculinity Revisited

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

2

• You aint shit. Just like your Daddy.

3
White Male Heterosexual Norm

• Primary Indicators of
• Manhood
• Whiteness
• Economic Power
• Political Power
• Ability to Protect Family
• Ability to control women (both black and white)

• Secondary Indicators of
• Manhood
• Physical Strength
• Virility

4
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.

5
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 . . . (Walker, History
  of
• Blacks in Canada 80).

6
Black Men as US Statistics (2002)

• Among males age 25 to 29, 12.9 of blacks were in
  prison or jail, compared to 4.3 of Hispanics and
  about 1.6 of whites
• One in three black men between the ages of 20 and
  29 years old is under correctional supervision or
  control
• 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
• During the economic boom of the 1990s, the of
  gainfully employed black men fell from 62 to 52.

7
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).

8
Black Men and the Family

• Structural Functionalist Definition of Family
• Nuclear Adult heterosexual couple and their
• young children
• Co-resident (preferably married)
• Patriarchal

9
Contesting Three Dominant Theories

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