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Preface about black men don’t believe the hype

When women get together and talk about men, the news is almost always bad news. If the topic gets specific and the focus is on black men the news is even worse. Despite all the advances in civil rights in our nation, feminist movement, sexual liberation, when the spotlight is on black males the message is usually that they have managed to stay stuck, that as a group they have not evolved with the times. Influential black male journalist Ellis Cose does little to dispel this image of black masculinity in his recent book The Envy of the World: On Being a Black Man in America. Yet his book has received more widespread attention than any other recent work focusing on black males.

Identifying black males as “a group apart” in the preface Cose contends:

Many of us are lost in this America of the twenty-first century. We are less sure of our place in the world than our predecessors, in part because our options, our potential choices, are so much grander than theirs. So we are trapped in a paradox. We know, whether we admit it openly or not, that in many respects things are better than they have ever been for us. This is a time, after all, when an African American [male] can be secretary of state and, possibly, even president. The old barriers that blocked us at every pass have finally fallen away—or they have opened up enough to allow a few of us to get through. But although it is fully within our power, collectively

C o p y r i g h t 2 0 0 4 . R o u t l e d g e .

A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . M a y n o t b e r e p r o d u c e d i n a n y f o r m w i t h o u t p e r m i s s i o n f r o m t h e p u b l i s h e r , e x c e p t f a i r u s e s p e r m i t t e d u n d e r U . S . o r a p p l i c a b l e c o p y r i g h t l a w .

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and individually, to achieve a level of success that would have been all but unimaginable for most of our forefathers, many of us are doomed to fail.

While Cose eloquently identifies many of the issues, he offers no vision of how black males might create new and different self-concepts.

The final chapter, titled “Twelve Things You Must Know to Survive and Thrive in America,” offers his “new world rules,” his keys to survival, or Cose’s “commandments,” or if you prefer “hard truths of this new age.” His hard truths are at best simple commonsense advice about how to get along in the world and at worst trite platitudes. He encourages black men to stop complaining, stop blaming others for their plight, to ask for help, and to stay away from toxic associates. Hard Truth 11 states “even if you have to fake it, show some faith in yourself.” Cose concludes his book with this disclaimer: “This volume is purposely less concerned with the systemic, with the grand social changes needed, than it is with the personal, with some things you might want to consider as you figure out how to live your life.” The Envy of the World is a disappointing cultural analysis of the plight of black males precisely because Cose fails to link the personal, everything that is happening in the daily lives of black males, with the political, with progressive movements for social justice that offer theoretical and practical strategies that could be used to enhance the emotional well-being of black males and increase their chances of living fully and well.

Despite his direct appeal to black males in his last chapter, the language of Cose’s book is that of the dispassionate observer. The book offers the kind of sketchy overview of black maleness that suggests its audiences are readers who simply do not have a clue about the experiences of black men. Even his chosen title, taken from the novel Sula by Toni Morrison, implies an audience of non-black males looking through the lens of their envy. Cose’s book certainly lets them know that they have nothing to envy. In the novel a black woman

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is chastising a black male for suggesting that he is not getting enough attention. She says:

I mean, I don’t know what the fuss is about. I mean, everything in the world love you. White men love you. They spend so much time worrying about your penis they forget their own…. And white women? They chase you all to every corner of the earth, feel for you under every bed…. Colored women worry themselves into bad health just trying to hang on to your cuffs. Even little children, white and black, boys and girls—spend all their childhood eating their hearts out ’cause you don’t love them. And if that ain’t enough, you love yourselves. Nothing in the world loves a black man more than another black man…. It looks to me like you the envy of the world.

Though seductive in its use of the word love, close analysis shows that what is really being described is not love but desire. Perhaps what complaining black males want the world to hear is that envy and desire are not aspects of love.

Sadly, the real truth, which is a taboo to speak, is that this is a culture that does not love black males, that they are not loved by white men, white women, black women, or girls and boys. And that especially most black men do not love themselves. How could they, how could they be expected to love surrounded by so much envy, desire, hate? Black males in the culture of imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy are feared but they are not loved. Of course part of the brainwashing that takes place in a culture of domination is the confusion of the two. Thriving on sadomasochist bonds, cultures of domination make desire for that which is despised take on the appearance of care, of love. If black males were loved they could hope for more than a life locked down, caged, confined; they could imagine themselves beyond containment.

Whether in an actual prison or not, practically every black male in the United States has been forced at some point in his life to hold back the self he wants to express, to repress and

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contain for fear of being attacked, slaughtered, destroyed. Black males often exist in a prison of the mind unable to find their way out. In patriarchal culture, all males learn a role that restricts and confines. When race and class enter the picture, along with patriarchy, then black males endure the worst impositions of gendered masculine patriarchal identity.

Seen as animals, brutes, natural born rapists, and murderers, black men have had no real dramatic say when it comes to the way they are represented. They have made few interventions on the stereotype. As a consequence they are victimized by stereotypes that were first articulated in the nineteenth century but hold sway over the minds and imaginations of citizens of this nation in the present day. Black males who refuse categorization are rare, for the price of visibility in the contemporary world of white supremacy is that black male identity be defined in relation to the stereotype whether by embodying it or seeking to be other than it. At the center of the way black male selfhood is constructed in white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy is the image of the brute—untamed, uncivilized, unthinking, and unfeeling.

Negative stereotypes about the nature of black masculinity continue to overdetermine the identities black males are allowed to fashion for themselves. The radical subculture of black maleness that begin to emerge as a natural outcome of militant anti-racist activism terrified racist white America. As long as black males were deemed savages unable to rise above their animal nature, they could be seen as a threat easily contained. It was the black male seeking liberation from the chains of imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy that had to be wiped out. This black man potential rebel, revolutionary, leader of the people could not be allowed to thrive.

More than any other black male who has come to power in our nation, Malcolm X embodied black male refusal to allow his identity to be defined by a system of race, gender, and class domination. His was the example that young black folks in the sixties followed as we struggled to educate ourselves for critical consciousness. We studied Malcolm’s words, accepting

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that he gave us permission to liberate ourselves, to liberate the black male by any means necessary.

There is no mention of the legacy of Malcolm X in Ellis Cose’s discussion of black male identity. The turbulent years of black power are remembered by Cose as marked by the murder of Fred Hampton. He recalls: “To me, the execution said volumes about the value of black male life in America, about how easily people could justify extinguishing it. But it also said a lot about fear; fear of the righteous anger of young, black men; fear of the potential power, bubbling beneath the system in the alienated hearts of the dispossessed.” It fits with Cose’s conservative narrative to forgo discussion of those individual black men who have courageously decolonized their minds and invented identities in resistance that transcend stereotypes. These black men, like W.E.B.DuBois and Malcolm X, did not see their success or failure in terms of wealth and fame. Their legacy has little meaning for masses of contempary black males because they struggled to challenge and change the system; they were not trying to make it work for them.

Wisely, individual radical black males understood and understand that imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy is an interrelated system of domination that will never fully empower black men. Right now that system is symbolically lynching masses of black men, choking off their very life, by making it all but impossible for them to learn basic reading and writing skills in childhood; by the promotion of addiction as the free enterprise system that works to provide unprecedented wealth to a few and short-term solace from collective pain for the many; by widespread unemployment; and the continued psychological lure of life-threatening patriarchal masculine behaviors. Anyone who claims to be concerned with the fate of black males in the United States who does not speak about the need for them to radicalize their consciousness to challenge patriarchy if they are to survive and flourish colludes with the existing system in keeping black men in their place, psychologically locked down, locked out.

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Today it should be obvious to any thinker and writer speaking about black males that the primary genocidal threat, the force that endangers black male life, is patriarchal masculinity. For more than thirty years one aspect of my political activism has been working to educate a mass public about the impact of patriarchy and sexism in the lives of black folks. As an advocate of feminist politics, I have consistently called attention to the need for men to critique patriarchy and involve themselves in shaping feminist movement and addressing male liberation. In an essay written more than ten years ago titled “Reconstructing Black Masculinity,” I suggest that “we can break the life threatening choke-hold patriarchal masculinity imposes on black men and create life sustaining visions of a reconstructed black masculinity that can provide black men ways to save their lies and the lives of their brothers and sisters in struggle.” Yet despite this work and similar work by Michele Wallace, Gary Lemons, Essex Hemphill, and other advocates of feminist politics, our work has not influenced the more mainstream writing about black masculinity that continues to push the notion that all black men need to do to survive is to become better patriarchs.

Public refusal to face the reality that the plight of black males, young and old, is worsened by the collusion of all those who express concern, who even opportunistically rise to the occasion by shedding a spotlight on black masculinity, while refusing to tell the truth about what must happen to change this circumstance. Conservatives and radicals alike seem to be better at talking about the plight of the black male than they are at naming strategies of resistance that would offer hope and meaningful alternatives. Those of us, black women and men, who have consistently spoken about the need to educate for critical consciousness in diverse black communities about patriarchy and sexism rarely receive the attention of the mainstream when discussing the crisis of black masculinity. Our writing is not mentioned in conservative books on the subject.

However when I go to diverse black settings to teach and lecture, black males of all classes are in the audience. Listening

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to these men I hear and share their concern that black males are losing ground, that their plight is worsening. No matter how much we call attention to the crisis of black masculinity, there is yet no collective response. A feeling of despair threatens to snuff out our collective will to create positive intervention on behalf of black men. There is a general feeling of weariness that I see among my peers, a feeling that “black men just don’t get it.” Certainly the black males that I know most intimately don’t seem to get it. At age eighty my father is still committed to patriarchal thought and action even though it keeps him isolated emotionally from loved ones, even though his sexism, and its concomitant violence and abuse, has ruined a marriage of more than fifty years. My brother who managed in his childhood to subvert patriarchal domination by remaining emotionally aware still strives to realize an unattainable ideal of patriarchal masculinity thus undermining the positive agency in his life. He often feels confused and discouraged. And the black males I have loved as partners have suffered the ravages of parental addiction and emotional neglect. Even though they are men who work hard, who are financially in good shape, they suffer emotionally.

All the black men that I love see themselves as isolated, cut off from any sense of group solidarity. They see most black male leaders as ineffectual hypocrites who are simply opportunists looking out for number one. They share with Michele Wallace the idea that: “When you look at so-called black leadership as reflected by the mainstream media, what you see is a motley crew of the narcissistic, the vaguely ridiculous, and the inept.” I tell audiences all the time who ask about the dearth of black leadership that there are radical visionaries among us willing and able to lead us in the direction of liberation and the vast majority of these folks are black women. Allegiance to sexist thinking about the nature of leadership creates a blindspot that effectively prevents masses of black people from making use of theories and practices of liberation when they are offered by women.

Realizing this I have hoped, along with radical black women comrades, that individual black men who care about the plight

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of black males and who are themselves advocates of feminist thinking would do more work to reach out to black males as a group. That work has not been forthcoming. Every time I encounter a radical thinking brother I encourage him to write, to share his wisdom with others. Many of the individual black men working in the field of ending male violence against women and children are experts at explaining black male crisis and finding paths to healing, but they just feel they do not have time to write. There is not even a small body of anti-patriarchal literature speaking directly to black males about what they can do to educate themselves for critical consciousness, guiding them on the path of liberation.

The absence of this work stands as further testimony validating the contention that the plight of black men is not taken seriously. An impressive body of literature arose in the wake of black female resistance struggles aimed at challenging systems of domination that were keeping us exploited and oppressed as a group. That literature has helped black females to empower ourselves. As both writer and reader of this work, I know that it changes lives for the better.

I have often pondered why no body of resistance literature has emerged from black males even though they actually own magazines and publishing houses. They have control over mass media, however relative. The failure lies with the lack of collective radicalization on the part of black men (most powerful black men in media are conservatives who support patriarchal thinking). Individual charismatic black male leaders with a radical consciousness often become so enamored of their unique status as the black man who is different that they fail to share the good news with other black men. Or they allow themselves to be co-opted—seduced by the promise of greater monetary rewards and access to mainstream power that are the payoffs for pushing a less radical message.

As a black woman who cares about the plight of black men, I feel I can no longer wait for brothers to take the lead and spread the word. I have spent ten years waiting. And in those years the suffering of black men has intensified. Writing this book I hope to add my voice to the small chorus of voices

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speaking out on behalf of black male liberation. Black women cannot speak for black men. We can speak with them. And by so doing embody the practice of solidarity wherein dialogue is the foundation of true love.

I came to my love of black maleness from a childhood where the black man whose love I most craved regarded me with contempt. Luckily, Daddy Gus, my mother’s father, gave me the love my heart longed for. Calm, tender, gentle, creative, a man of silence and peace, he offered me a vision of black masculinity that ran counter to the patriarchal norm. He was the first radical black man in my life. He laid the foundation. Always engaging me in dialogue, always supporting my longing for knowledge, and always encouraging me to speak my mind, I honor the covenant between us, the lessons of black male and female partnership grounded in mutuality he taught me by continuing to dialogue with black men, by continuing to do the work of true love.

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