Black Men' Studies: Part 1
What is Black Men’s Studies? Towards a Beginning Definition
This article lays out an argument for the reconceptualization of both our historical and contemporary understanding of Black Manhood, one that goes beyond narrow discussions of sexuality and masculinity, or the mere representation of manhood. It represents a calculated and institutionalized response to continual attempts by the academy and news media to capture the essence of what black men experience in American culture and society: past, present, and future.
The recent New York Times article on "The Plight of Black Men" fails to adequately address historical examples of conditions faced by black men as well as the numerous examples of agency exhibited by them throughout countless generations.
Black Men’s Studies is an historically-based and interdisciplinary model that provides for the scholarly examination of black men’s lives and lived realities. Black Men’s Studies offers a critical theory that encompasses all scholarship written by as well as about black men. Moreover, it develops the basis for incorporating a sense of historical particularity into the gendered study of black men, which examines the realities of black men’s lives, as they understood them, thus allowing them to speak for themselves. In positing the theoretical framework of Black Men’s Studies, I attempt to reinterpret the gender of Black Men, by acknowledging that Black Men actually do have a gender. Such a theory is in dialogue with Black Feminist Thought as well as Africana Womanism, even as it carves out a particular space for the critical interrogation of black men’s lives. In fact, theories of Africana Womanism and Black Feminist Thought provide the theoretical support needed to justify the scholarly and critical examination of black men; a task which heretofore, has yet to be undertaken by black men themselves (men qua men).
In an attempt to develop a more comprehensive theory for understanding the multi-varied contours, realities, and complexities of black manhood in 20th Century America, in particular, I utilize the work and theories of scholars such as theologian, Dwight N. Hopkins; sociologists Robert Staples and Patricia Hill Collins; Historians Manning Marable, Darlene Clarke Hine, and Earnestine Perkins; as well as W.E. B. Du Bois, Barbara Smith, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Gloria T. Hull, among others.
Furthermore, this theory represents an interdisciplinary model, by combining literary, biographical, and autobiographical writings of black men, historical accounts of their lives and times as well as examinations offered by scholars of Black Masculinity Studies, Sociology, Psychology, Black Feminist Thought and Africana Womanism, among other disciplines.
This work goes beyond contemporary studies of Black masculinity and American men, which in my estimation, marginalize the study of black men by reducing such a study to a fixation on sexuality, as the defining feature of Black Manhood. Just as it is erroneous to study the construction of race without critical considerations of the interplay of gender, and class, it is equally erroneous to study gender without examining the critical interplay between intellectual, spiritual, and physical dimensions.
This theory probes for deeper examinations of the souls and minds of black men even as it seeks to more comprehensively understand the positive and negative physical ramifications attributable to men embodying black skin and identity. The power of naming oneself, as Hull, Bell-Scott, and Smith assert in regards to Black Women’s Studies, is in itself a political act. This issue is further underscored as one examines and defines, through the lenses of Du Bois, Harold Cruse, E. Franklin Frazier, Cornel West, and others, the dilemmas, paradoxes, and crises of black intellectuals from the standpoint and voice of their identity and role as embattled black men.
Lastly, this theory integrates and puts forward a call for a Critical Black Men’s Theology, one that uses as its standpoint the theological doctrine of humanity. It represents a critical Black Men’s Theology that is in dialogue with Womanist and Black Feminist Theology. It seeks to address relevant criticisms of the black theology project raised by Jacquelyn Grant and other womanist theologians concerning the issue of gender in theological and black church spheres-the public and private. Parallel to that understanding is the question of whether black men have also possessed souls worthy of examination. This discussion will be aided by a reading and critique of the writings of many Black men religious intellectuals, including Benjamin Mays, Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, James Baldwin, and others.
This article lays out an argument for the reconceptualization of both our historical and contemporary understanding of Black Manhood, one that goes beyond narrow discussions of sexuality and masculinity, or the mere representation of manhood. It represents a calculated and institutionalized response to continual attempts by the academy and news media to capture the essence of what black men experience in American culture and society: past, present, and future.
The recent New York Times article on "The Plight of Black Men" fails to adequately address historical examples of conditions faced by black men as well as the numerous examples of agency exhibited by them throughout countless generations.
Black Men’s Studies is an historically-based and interdisciplinary model that provides for the scholarly examination of black men’s lives and lived realities. Black Men’s Studies offers a critical theory that encompasses all scholarship written by as well as about black men. Moreover, it develops the basis for incorporating a sense of historical particularity into the gendered study of black men, which examines the realities of black men’s lives, as they understood them, thus allowing them to speak for themselves. In positing the theoretical framework of Black Men’s Studies, I attempt to reinterpret the gender of Black Men, by acknowledging that Black Men actually do have a gender. Such a theory is in dialogue with Black Feminist Thought as well as Africana Womanism, even as it carves out a particular space for the critical interrogation of black men’s lives. In fact, theories of Africana Womanism and Black Feminist Thought provide the theoretical support needed to justify the scholarly and critical examination of black men; a task which heretofore, has yet to be undertaken by black men themselves (men qua men).
In an attempt to develop a more comprehensive theory for understanding the multi-varied contours, realities, and complexities of black manhood in 20th Century America, in particular, I utilize the work and theories of scholars such as theologian, Dwight N. Hopkins; sociologists Robert Staples and Patricia Hill Collins; Historians Manning Marable, Darlene Clarke Hine, and Earnestine Perkins; as well as W.E. B. Du Bois, Barbara Smith, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Gloria T. Hull, among others.
Furthermore, this theory represents an interdisciplinary model, by combining literary, biographical, and autobiographical writings of black men, historical accounts of their lives and times as well as examinations offered by scholars of Black Masculinity Studies, Sociology, Psychology, Black Feminist Thought and Africana Womanism, among other disciplines.
This work goes beyond contemporary studies of Black masculinity and American men, which in my estimation, marginalize the study of black men by reducing such a study to a fixation on sexuality, as the defining feature of Black Manhood. Just as it is erroneous to study the construction of race without critical considerations of the interplay of gender, and class, it is equally erroneous to study gender without examining the critical interplay between intellectual, spiritual, and physical dimensions.
This theory probes for deeper examinations of the souls and minds of black men even as it seeks to more comprehensively understand the positive and negative physical ramifications attributable to men embodying black skin and identity. The power of naming oneself, as Hull, Bell-Scott, and Smith assert in regards to Black Women’s Studies, is in itself a political act. This issue is further underscored as one examines and defines, through the lenses of Du Bois, Harold Cruse, E. Franklin Frazier, Cornel West, and others, the dilemmas, paradoxes, and crises of black intellectuals from the standpoint and voice of their identity and role as embattled black men.
Lastly, this theory integrates and puts forward a call for a Critical Black Men’s Theology, one that uses as its standpoint the theological doctrine of humanity. It represents a critical Black Men’s Theology that is in dialogue with Womanist and Black Feminist Theology. It seeks to address relevant criticisms of the black theology project raised by Jacquelyn Grant and other womanist theologians concerning the issue of gender in theological and black church spheres-the public and private. Parallel to that understanding is the question of whether black men have also possessed souls worthy of examination. This discussion will be aided by a reading and critique of the writings of many Black men religious intellectuals, including Benjamin Mays, Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, James Baldwin, and others.
posted by Zach Williams at 2:08 PM
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