Black masculinity and act out reductive fantasies of Black masculine culture in ways that objectify Black males.
Globally, the surface level of Black masculine culture is adopted by many different ethnic groups in efforts to construct local masculinities. In many cases, but not always, it is done in ways that reinforce highly stereotypical or exaggerated imaginations of Black maleness; therein lies another critical layer of the problem. These reductive fantasies of Black masculine culture generate real social and political consequences, from lynching and the underdevelopment of neighborhoods, to present-day police abuses. Black males themselves resist White stereotyping and appropriation of their culture by crafting new identities through cultural products like hip-hop (Brown, 2006).
Like Black culture in general, Black male culture influences mainstream American culture and popular culture around the world. Mainstream culture would be impossible to imagine without the transformative force of Black culture (White, 2011). In the media, Black male culture has been reduced to visible evidence, or what has been described as surface-level culture (Alexander, 2006). Hip-hop in general and hardcore hip-hop specifically has typically privileged the male body and the performance of masculinity (White, 2011). In many instances, Blackness has been reduced to exaggerations of surface-level cultural manifestations, reducing it to a spectacle or parody for many non-Blacks.
When Blackness is reduced to an aesthetic act it becomes disconnected from values such as social responsibility and political struggle (White, 2011). White and Cones (1999) draw two conclusions from the White appropriation of Black culture (Black males in particular). First, African Americans can achieve a standard of excellence with skill, drive and inventiveness. Second, White America and many others look at Black men without even seeing them. This means that they can dance to Black music, watch Black athletes, and consume other Black cultural products without ever acknowledging the contributions of the Black way of being to American life and thought (White & Cones, 1999).
The Absent Presence of Black Males
According to White (2011), the Black physical body was an indispensable part of Black musical performance until the arrival of sound recording in the early 20th century. At that point, social enjoyment of music no longer required the presence of a body. This technology allowed Black music, like other forms of Black culture, to be distanced from its social-cultural origins, in a way that allowed it to become the cultural property of others.
Minstrel shows are one of the earliest examples of Whites appropriating and depicting exaggerated aspects of Black culture. White (2011) refers to this phenomenon of Blacks being rendered invisible as an absent presence. Depictions of Black males at the time were exaggerated and stereotypical, illustrating ←25 | 26→the Black male body with wild and crazy eyes, red lips, oversized hands, and undersized clothes. These White false depictions of Black maleness were ways that Whites could play out their fears, resentments, hostilities, and even desires. Today, commercial hip-hop, along with other forms of media, make the Black male body available for mainstream consumption—often tailored for middle-class Whites’ and others’ tastes for exaggerated carnivalesque images by Black masculinity (White, 2011).
The appropriation of Black music is a long-established tradition of exploitation. Basu (2005) describes a cycle of castigation, commodification, crossover, and counter-crossover in the appropriation of Black music and style: the current version of this cycle perhaps starting with Nick LaRocca, on to Elvis Presley and continued by Eminem, Justin Timberlake, and Macklemore. Cultural appropriation of Blackness usually begins with castigation. European Americans originally referred to the music of enslaved Africans as barbaric, uncivilized, wild, unsophisticated, and nonsensical (Burnim & Maultsby, 2006). Blues music was described similarly, and so was hip-hop, and certain genres within it. Although blues originated in the late 1800s, White people did not take an interest in the art form in large numbers until the 1960s (Burnim & Maultsby, 2006).
Blues music contributed the twelve-bar three-line form, blue notes and blues scales, blues imagery and themes, improvisational style, and tonal techniques to popular music genres. Country music adopted the blues form (manifested in the blue yodel) by the 1920s. In the 1950s, early rock and roll performers adopted blues styles blended with country music (Evans, 2006). However, as musical forms like the blues are adopted broadly, they become reinterpreted through values that differ, in varying degrees, from the artists who originated them. In particular, themes of cultural values and experiences such as social protest and racial identity become diminished when interpreted through color-blind lenses. Evans (2006) explains how Whites monitored Black cultural expressions during slavery and interpreted them through Eurocentric cultural standards. As Whites became more attracted to the music, some Black artists would cross over, or adapt their performance styles to the tastes of White audiences. Consistent with the theme of appropriation, White adaptations of Black music were viewed as authentic White creations without Black influence. This was the customary White denial of the impact of Black creativity on White-identified culture (Evans, 2006). Because of this denial, White appropriation of Black music has largely gone unacknowledged (e.g., White artists like Led Zeppelin) (Evans, 2006). In general, White performers of blues-influenced music have been able to achieve counter-crossover success easier than Black artists because they can market and appeal to White middle-class consumers a product stripped of cultural context.
The history of the blues reveals that White appropriation was an attempt to control Black cultural production and its economic value (Evans, 2006). Whites objected to ragtime music and deemed it low brow, a consistent theme in White castigation of Black music before it is eventually commodified. However, some elitist Blacks objected to ragtime for different reasons, including their critique that it was stereotypical. When R&B emerged in the 1930s and 1940s, it was found exclusively in Black communities (Maultsby, 2006). However, by the 1950s, major record labels were signing White artists who performed R&B covers described as having a Black feel. Initially, labels refused to sign Black artists. Many Southern Whites blamed the deteriorating values and rebelliousness of White youth on their attraction to R&B music. In the 1950s as soul music emerged, the term soul was a signifier of Black culture (Maultsby, 2006). Whites didn’t start using the language of soul until Billboard adopted the term as an official category.
Rhoden (2006) explains that soul (Black style) had a counterpart in sports. He describes Willie Mays basket catch which made catching a fly ball look easy and goes on to describe how Negro League Players (Black baseball players) integrated style into their performance. Black athletes have integrated style into sports in ways that again have influenced White youth, from slapping palms, to wearing baggy pants, executing creative dunks, to elaborate end-zone dances in football (Rhoden, ←26 | 27→2006). Whites having less ability to capitalize on Black style in the post-integration era, combined with an increased mainstream appetite for it, has generated a familiar cultural tension. In baseball, Willie Mays’ style was criticized as showboating. R.C. Owens, adopted the alley-oop play from basketball into football with similar criticism. It is important to note that the in 1966 the National Basketball Association (NBA) outlawed the dunk to neutralize Lew Alcindor, a Black, quick, and agile seven-foot-two-inch center (White & Cones, 1999). According to Beasley et al. (2014), African American males are pop-culture icons honored as athletes and entertainers, while simultaneously depicted as societal villains who are maligned for poor academic achievement, criminality, and violence. Black athletes’ stylistic behaviors continue to be castigated as unsportsmanlike, unfair, and thuggish, until which time they become popular and are marketed to the mainstream. Yet Black people are seldom the primary financial beneficiaries.
According to Howard, (2014), social scientists sometimes place too much focus on culture, especially in explaining negative life outcomes and behaviors. As a consequence of this cultural over-attribution, focus is taken off of opportunity structures, institutional racism, economic instability, inferior schooling, drugs, crime, and violence as factors that help explain some Black males’ life outcomes. Noguera (2014) explains the use
