racism prevented Black men from achieving these attributes of manhood.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1965) began to address the gendered racism and economic discrimination that uniquely affected Black men. He observed that the gendered nature of job availability (domestic jobs that favored women) made it especially difficult for Black men to be heads of households. Moreover, as Martin Luther King Jr.’s mentor Benjamin Mays recalled, to display manhood as White men did, was to invite disaster (Estes, 2005, p. 6). Yet, Malcolm X put forth a conceptualization of masculinity that was more assertive in regard to self-determination and self-defense. He rejected the non-violent principle of Martin Luther King, Jr. as unintelligent and unmanly.
The seventh period was the Black Power Era. Heavily influenced by Malcolm X, the Black Power movement represented a revolutionary, resistant, and rebellious form of manhood as compared to earlier periods. The Black Power movement promoted a worldview in which every aspect of a Black person’s life was expected to be geared toward Black collective self-determination (Rhoden, 2006). Pass, Benoit, and Dunlap (2014) claim that this period during the 1960s was the first time Black manhood was acknowledged on a societal level—although it was presented in a pathological way. In the mainstream media, Black males were presented as dangerous, menacing, and angry, especially the male leaders of the Black Power movement (Pass et al., 2014). The Black Panther Party tied assertive community service to manhood; engaging in armed self-defense and building their own institutions. Some Black men during the Black Power movement were outspoken against homosexuality, perhaps none more than Eldridge Cleaver. However, others like Huey Newton challenged such views and voiced support for women’s and gay liberation movements (Estes, 2005).
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This era was also accompanied by some patriarchal patterns of thinking and acting among Black men. But the women’s and gay liberation movements of this period also influenced many to begin to question and reinterrogate notions of patriarchy during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Although Black women comprised the majority of the party, Black men were overrepresented in leadership positions. While many men held beliefs that women were unfit for leadership, some Black male party members, like Fred Hampton, openly challenged those who attempted to subordinate Black women.
Presently, Black males continue to be presented as angry, violent, hypersexual, and deviant. They are perceived socially as “threatening, animalistic, sexually depraved and crime-prone” (Pass et al., 2014). These historical periods of gender identity illustrate how conceptualizations of manhood have shifted and maintained common features, while gender equality has experienced both progress and stagnation.
Gender socialization, through the observation of social roles in families, represents one of the major ways that children learn gender roles. Yet, Black men have largely been excluded from research on gender socialization. Hill (2002) explains that most scholars focus on the gender socialization of African American girls. Pre-colonial African societies established clearly defined roles for males and carefully delineated steps designed to facilitate boys’ psychosocial maturation to manhood (White & Cones, 1999). The system of slavery was used to suppress Black men’s abilities to assume the roles of breadwinners, protectors, and heads of families. However, Black men continued to find ways to fight against this suppression and be providers and protectors of their families, and socializers of their children.
Presently, within African American families, Black children are exposed to a range of masculine roles including Black men as provider, egalitarian decision maker, defeated male, player of women, and street tough (i.e., a gangster). Using in-depth interviews with 35 African American parents, Hill (2002) examined what parents teach their children about gender and how gender affects the distribution of work in their families. Her results showed that, regardless of sex, most Black parents gave verbal support for gender equality in child socialization. Those who had higher levels of education were more likely to support gender equality than those with lower levels of education. However, some gender differences existed in how work was distributed. In married families, fathers were proud of their participation in the home. Mothers did most of the routine care tasks and discipline, while fathers spent more recreational and education time with the children (Hill, 2002).
Hill (2002) also found that sons of single mothers were more involved in childcare activities than sons of married mothers. Belgrave and Brevard (2015) refer to this as an androgynous gender role (an individual possessing close to a balance in masculine and feminine qualities). Some parents (newly middle-class Black) had concerns about homosexuality. However, there is some evidence that cross-gender type behaviors from males are met with more parental disapproval. According to Hill (2002), feminine traits were devalued by some parents; boys would be more likely to be stigmatized for being “sissies” than girls for being “tomboys.” Leaper’s (1995) investigation of mother-child communication patterns revealed that mothers were much less tolerant of cross-gender-type behaviors in sons as compared to daughters. Black male gender identity develops through gender socialization processes.
What it means to be a man or boy varies widely across the globe. Equally, there is no one definition of masculinity or manhood that could possibly apply to all Black males. Indeed, singular notions of Black male gender can exclude large numbers of males who operate based upon different notions of what it means to be both Black and male (Howard, 2014). Gender role identities are personal beliefs ←64 | 65→about the characteristics of one sex compared to others, the feelings associated with those beliefs, and how individuals perceive themselves in comparison to others of their gender (Mandara, Murray, & Joyner, 2011; Wood & Hilton, 2013; Woolfolk, 2008). On a broader level, gender roles are socially constructed and shaped by all members of society (Wood & Hilton, 2013).
Where Black Males Get Ideas About Manhood and Masculinity
To enhance Black males’ exposure to positive images of masculinity, it is important to understand where they get their images of masculinity. Roberts-Douglass, Curtis-Boles, Levant, Rochlen, and Wade (2013) interviewed 15 African American men about their images of masculinity acquired during adolescence and where those images came from. The images were both positive and negative and came from a variety of sources including family members and kin, peers, neighborhoods, institutions of learning, media and music. Identified images were classified into several categories: tough guy, gangster/thug, players of women, flashy and flamboyant, athletes, providers, and role models (Roberts-Douglass et al., 2013).
In general, adolescent Black males’ positive images came from family members. Negative images, like being a thug or player, came primarily from the media. Some of the sources of Black men’s understandings of manhood and masculinity, such as their peers and parents, are members of their reference groups. Peers in dangerous environments have also been found to be, in part, responsible for pressuring other Black youth to display bravado and brashness, while ridiculing those who do not display enough toughness (Belgrave & Brevard, 2015; Cunningham & Meunier, 2004). Franklin (1994) suggests that Black males who are too heavily peer-group controlled may be more likely to adopt the following characteristics of masculinity: aggressiveness, violence, competitiveness, heterosexuality, cool poses, dominance, sexism, and passivity/indifference in mainstream society.
Boys usually develop their sense of being a male between the ages of three and four due to their recognition of biological sex differences and sharing the same physical characteristics as others (Wade, 2014). A part of gender identity also comes from messages boys receive from others who tell them how a boy is supposed to be. Males often internalize the messages about masculinity they receive from their male reference group (Wade, 2014). During early childhood, a boy’s male reference group typically includes fathers, father figures, and groups of older males, but shifts to include other males over time. Adolescent
