how they can achieve their destinies in spite of opposition while uplifting their communities. Culturally grounded approaches to healing and recovering from the damage done by anti-Black-maleness is crucial.
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Black Males, Gender, Manhood, and Masculinities
Manhood and masculinity play critical roles in the health and well-being of Black men and boys. A great deal of writing is available on the roles these elements play in the challenges that confront Black males. However, not enough knowledge has been produced about the history of Black manhood and masculinity and the social and cultural contexts in which they are nurtured. Thus, this chapter outlines the history of Black manhood and masculinity from its pre-colonial African roots to its more recent unfolding. The role that power plays in the development of Black manhood and masculinity is explored in addition to their unique qualities and expressions. Because it is important to understand how Black manhood and masculinity are viewed in the mainstream, this chapter outlines some popular scholarship about Black men, while challenging misperceptions. Lastly, this chapter explores Black manhood development programs and initiatives.
Gender is a term referring to the personal traits and qualities that members of a society attach to biological characteristics, including but not limited to male and female designations. As Ratliff (2014) explains, “classifying someone as “male,” “female,” (or “intersex”) takes into account the social construction of gender, which emphasize sex differences associated with masculinity and femininity” (p. 20). Yet, through a spiritual lens, male and female are sometimes interpreted as physical manifestations of divine complementarity and synergy. Gender, a social construction, has to do with the meaning attached to masculinity and femininity. It is less about biology than it is about culture, which influences the meaning people attach to it (Ratliff, 2014). It interacts with race and shapes how Black males think about themselves and others. Moreover, it also shapes how other people think of Black males. Gender exists at the intersection of biology and culture, an intersection that continues to be explored (Sommers, 2013). The gender of Black men and boys must be understood as the products of nature, nurture, and culture (Gurian & Stevens, 2005).
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The terms masculinity and manhood are often used interchangeably, but in this text the two will be distinguished. Drawing on the definitions of Dancy (2012), Davis (2009), and Howard (2014), manhood refers to the worldviews, values, beliefs, philosophies, self-expectations, and responsibilities that men accept or acknowledge. Masculinity refers to the expressions, behaviors, and performances men and boys engage in which demonstrate their maleness or their conceptions of manhood (Davis, 2009). Masculinity may be thought of as more behavior-based, while manhood is more of a state of being and becoming—a process (Howard, 2014). Black conceptions of manhood are multidimensional and diverse (Neal, 2005), although stereotypes about Black males allow that variety to go unnoticed or be willfully ignored. Like manhood, masculinity should be more precisely understood in plurality, as masculinities (Davis, 2009). Another way of describing masculinity is the socially constructed characteristics attached to being of the male sex (Lemelle, 2010). Male is the physiological distinction, while manhood and masculinity are social/cultural. Drawing on this understanding of masculinity, females and males may possess masculinity or femininity. For example, the fact that boys tend to prefer different reading material (i.e., comics, science fiction, and sports) than females in elementary school is a statistical reality more than a rigid statement about all boys or girls. This demonstrates a very important part of this description of Black males and gender; it is a discussion of patterns of behavior and thinking, not absolute claims about either sex or gender. This is an examination that explains statistical differences, not uniform characteristics of any gender.
Black Manhood in Historical Context
Dancy (2012) has the most comprehensive periodization of the history of Black manhood. The following analysis builds on both Dancy’s (2012) and Howard’s (2014) periodization of Black manhood via more expansive descriptions, and Afrocentric analysis. The first period consists of indigenous African conceptualizations of manhood before the European slave trade in the Atlantic Ocean. Many scholars have failed to examine this period and make claims that Black manhood concepts and identities emerged only after slavery (Johns, 2007). However, rituals and customs at each stage in men’s life cycle inculcated African males with specific worldviews. Different African societies had clear understandings of manhood and cultural mechanisms to pass those meanings down from one generation to the next. One theme in many African societies is their creation of a series of rituals and steps designed to facilitate healthy and functional progression toward manhood (Rosier, 2011). For boys, elders constructed trials and tasks to complete in controlled environments so they might understand manhood (Rosier, 2011). These rites of passage started from early childhood to late adolescence and continued with marriage and funeral rites. Children were guided through and supported during these processes by elders, biological family members, extended-family members, and entire villages or communities. Males in pre-colonial African societies generally emerged from rites, rituals, and social institutions with an understanding of the values, beliefs, philosophies, and ideals associated with manhood. These were typically elements of overall African worldviews, including but not limited to complex interactions of spirituality, collective identity, responsibility to family and community, physical prowess, husbandhood, fatherhood, honor to the supreme being, respect/honor for the ancestors, courage, discipline, leadership, brotherhood, warrior-hood, respect for and harmony with nature, knowledge of ethnic history and wisdom, intelligence, skills/crafts, and respect for elders.
One of the central features of pre-colonial African conceptualizations of gender is the perception of male and female as complimentary divine principles of humanity (Ani, 1994; Nobles, 2006; T’Shaka, 1995). In ancient Kemet, male and female principles are manifestations of divine inclusiveness, together representing humanity in its wholeness (Karenga, 2010a). Karenga (2010a) explains they are “equal possessors of dignity and divinity” (p. 269). Yet, in addition to complementarity, pre-colonial African ←58 | 59→cosmologies also involved more fluid definitions and expressions of gender (Nzegwu, 2003; Oyewumi, 2002), which privileged relationships and spirituality in ways distinct from Western bio-logic which emphasizes physical characteristics and behaviors. For example, in the ceremonies of Ifa and Vodun spirituality, male spiritual deities may mount (possess) women and female deities can mount men, blurring rigid gender lines since both male and female represent divine principles (Michel & Daniels, 2009). Contrarily, discussions of complementary relationships in African philosophy need not idealize the past as a place where self-realization for both men and women were unconstrained (Cornwall & IAI, 2005). However, interrogating pre-colonial African thought does provide the cultural reference point for framing the unique social structures and gender relations in contemporary African and African diasporic societies. According to T’Shaka (1995), in Western thought, the female principle has been alienated from the masculine as compared to pre-colonial African thought and family systems.
The next era of Black manhood is post-transplantation antebellum America. African men brought their cultural identities and understandings to the New World. However, they were physically separated from their African contexts. Black men’s traditional roles as husbands, fathers, providers, and protectors of their communities were transformed by oppression, but men managed to fulfill these roles through persistence, creativity, resistance, and resilience. Black (1997) claims that Black men were severed from their cultures and their manhood. But this claim is contradicted
