and put your spirits in a state of awareness. There will be no further pause in this instruction until it is all over.” (Somé, 1994, p. 203)
The elders leading the initiation explained it is not possible to have knowledge without sight. For the Dagara, seeing goes beyond visual acuity, which is the narrowest level of perception (Somé, 1998). It is the development of spiritual sight that expands a person’s vision, making more of the world knowable. In Somé’s (1998) words, “We perceive the world based on our expectations, which are heavily determined by our context” (p. 65). The historical and contemporary social context in which Black males live, interacting with themselves and others, includes certain expectations. How do expectations of Black males shape the way people perceive and interact with them? How do they shape how people casually think about Black males? How do these expectations shape the way professional researchers study and write about Black males?
As thinkers, our choices of what we think about are, in part, shaped by what we already know plus our presumptions, beliefs, frustrations, passions, curiosities, and fascinations, etc. These drivers are important because they motivate us to learn—but they can stand in our way, too. In Of Water in the Spirit, young Malidoma Somé struggles to learn to see (based on the Dagara meaning of sight) because ←xiii | xiv→he was limited by what he already knew or thought he knew. He and the other initiates were given a task requiring them to tap into their sight, as Somé explains:
When we arrived back at the initiation camp, it was almost deserted. Those present were being given the assignment of the day: tree knowledge. I had expected a general meeting of the type we had the night before, but nothing like what happened. Instead, we were placed in groups of five to fifteen and asked to walk a distance away. Each initiate should select a sizeable tree. We were to sit, stand, or kneel about twenty meters from the tree and look hard at it. We were supposed to see something but were not told what. Each elder was assigned a certain number of students. Apparently, his task was to supervise this boring training and to make sure that we saw what we were supposed to see. (Somé, 1994, p. 206)
Somé found the process frustrating and boring because he believed he knew all he could possibly know about trees. After all, trees are physical objects that are everywhere and can be seen every day. What more could there be to know about them? Somé grew frustrated and wanted to say he had seen something. His fellow initiates begin to see something in the tree, and he could not. The elders began to discuss him as he began to fall behind the group:
Another elder joined my supervisor and they began to discuss me. I listened carefully. “How is he doing?” the newcomer asked. “In his belly, he is a full-bred White. He can’t see,” my supervisor replied. “The White man’s medicine must have damaged vuur [spirit]. But his soul is still in him. That’s why I said a year ago that for his own sake he should not be involved in initiation. But Kyéré silenced me as if I were speaking nonsense. Now, if this boy cannot wipe his eyes, how do you think he is going to clean his body? We are barely a day into Baor and he is trailing behind … Whatever he learned in the school of the White man must be hurting his ability to push through the veil. Something they did to him is telling him not to see this tree. But why would they do that? You cannot teach a child to conspire against himself. What kind of teacher would teach something like that? Surely the White man didn’t do that to him. Can it be that the White man’s power can be experienced only if he first buries the truth? How can a person have knowledge if he can’t see?” (Somé, 1994, pp. 208–209)
Something that set Somé apart was his attendance at a Jesuit mission school, where he was taught to view traditional Dagara culture as backward and inferior. Clearly, this damaged his vision. During the tree exercise, he even tried to lie, and say that he had seen an antelope. The elders knew he was lying and laughed. The next day he approached his task with a new determination. He began to feel a part of his mind that he had not used before. Still frustrated, he began to cry, yet keeping his focus on the tree, began speaking honestly to it, explaining his frustration and sadness at his failure. He once again focused and felt what seemed like lightning going through his body and into the ground. He felt weightless, the trees began to glow, and he lost all sense of time. Where there once was a tree he now saw a woman standing before him with a radiating energy. He embraced the woman and felt immeasurable love from her as she spoke to him. When he opened his eyes, he was embracing the tree. He heard the elders speaking:
They are always like this. First, they resist and play dumb when there are a lot of things waiting to be done, and then when it happens, they won’t let go either. Children are so full of contradictions. The very experience you reject before with lies, you are now accepting without apology. (Somé, 1994, p. 223)
As the elders claimed, Somé essentially had to overcome what he already knew. How often do we ask questions about Black males and never investigate them because we assume that we already know the answers? How often do questions never get asked because we believe that we already know? We engage in study and research because of our interest in expanding and challenging what we already know—to learn. Like the Dagara initiates, we must acquire new skills and thought processes in order to expand our vision. Similar to Somé’s experience, studying Black men and boys requires learning to see beyond what mainstream society teaches us to see and think.
←xiv | xv→
It is not possible to be knowledgeable about Black males without developing a certain sight to see the fullness of their humanity. In this text I argue that, like Malidoma Somé looking at the tree as hard as he could, in the American context, most people’s perceptions of Black males are compromised. We do not look at them with the guidance of elders who are present to make sure we see them properly. Like Somé, our vision is distorted by what we already know: knowledge shaped in an institutionally and culturally anti-Black male society. To develop a true awareness of Black male realities, people must wipe their eyes beginning with the acknowledgment of their presumptions or biases. The purpose of this introduction is to identify the key concepts and information that represent bridges and barriers to perceiving and understanding the humanity and personhood of Black men and boys.
At the heart of Africana Studies is the Africalogical perspective which, represents a certain sight, a way of seeing peoples of African descent as self-conscious human beings grounded in unique histories, cultures, and identities. In the current text, this sight will be applied to the exploration of the lives of Black men and boys; how they relate to and influence themselves, others and their environments throughout time (roots, contexts, futures) and space (geography). The approach of this work is informed by Bush and Bush’s (2013) African American male theory, Nobles, Goddard, and Gilbert’s (2009) culturecology theory, and Margarette Beale Spencer’s phenomenological variant of the ecological systems theory.
Seeing the Humanity and Personhood of Black Men and Boys
Seeing Power as a Guidance System for Thought on Black Males
Power-centered or asset-based approaches to studying Black males focus on the examination of strengths, resilience, and success (Bonner, 2014; Howard, 2014; King, 2014; Mitchell & Stewart, 2013). This kind of research is geared toward the development of policy initiatives and successful institutional interventions that lead to positive Black male outcomes. It operates from a position that interventions must be driven by males’ strengths and potential, instead of problems and failures (Howard, 2014).
The opposite of the strengths-based approach is the problem-based approach. When Black males are defined as problems to be solved, what goes missing are their strengths, successes, and solutions that deserve attention, investigation, and expansion. Stereotypes can be a sort of navigational and guidance system for scholarship on Black males. Because researchers are not immune, stereotypes influence their choices of topics, approaches to studying,
