The Myth of the Man Under the Bed (original) (raw)

From 1965 to 2018: What Happened to Black Men

Journal of Underrepresented and Minority Progress, 2019

In 1965, there were a number of major events occurring in the United States, including U.S. soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War; the historic march that took place in Selma, Alabama, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; the murder of Malcom X in Harlem, New York; and the signing of The Voters Rights Act by President Lyndon B. Johnson. It was a time that Black families were moving in a positive direction in the areas of housing, employment, and education. Since 1965, Black men in the United States have not made the same progress as their White and Hispanic counterparts. This article explores both the absence of Black males in households as well as the nesting syndrome created by mothers rearing Black men and its impact on Black males since 1965.

Misandric Mischaracterizations of Black Males

2018

Black males have been characterized as violent, misogynist, predatory rapists by gender theorists dating back to mid-nineteenth–century ethnologists to contemporary intersectional feminists. These caricatures of Black men and boys are not rooted in any actual studies or empirical findings, but the stereotypes found throughout various racist social scientific literatures that held Black males to be effeminate while nonetheless hyper-masculine and delinquent. This paper argues that contemporary gender theories not only deny the peculiar sexual oppression of racialized outgroup males under patriarchy, but theories like intersectional invisibility actually perpetuates the idea that racialized males are disposable. To remedy the imperceptibility of sexual oppression and violence under the male category, the author gives an historical account of the development of racist (anti-Black) misandry throughout the centuries and proposes a theory of phallicism to describe the seemingly contradict...

Marriage Promotion and Missing Men: African American Women in a Demographic Double Bind

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2004

Since 1996, state legislators, members of the U.S. Congress, and more recently President George W. Bush, have called for the protection of monogamous, heterosexual marriage and the promotion of marriage among poor women. The thrust of this policy making is directed at African American families, among which female headship doubled between 1965 and 1990. This doubling is temporally associated with enacting the legislation directed toward the War on Drugs, which resulted in a tripling of the African American prison population. In Syracuse, New York, the swelling African American population behind bars has resulted in a skewed sex ratio, in which women significantly outnumber men. The authors use national, state, and local epidemiological, environmental, and ethnographic data

Stranger Fruit: The Cultural Coding of Black Males in America

On February 27th, 2012, the world at large did not know who Trayvon Martin was. He was not a headline nor a subject of public debate; he was simply a dead black boy. A month later, his story was finally broadcasts, but he was soon thought to be the cause of his own death. He chose the wrong thing to wear, and had the unfortunate burden of being a young black male. More and more black victims are constantly being put on trail for their own deaths. There is a dark root on the tree that bears this stranger fruit; a sickness of cultural coding that denies justice, creates inequalities, and perpetuates destructive stereotypes. In my paper I look at how cultural coding implements framing black victims in a negative light, recriminalizing black victims, and uses the appropriate power structures such as legislature and the dominant media, to continue the coding of present and potential black victims. I look at how through constant disclosure of negatively skewed statistics and withholding positive actions by black males, the dominant culture keeps the code in place. I question the reprogramming of the code, stating that only through education, social and political mobilization, and legislation change will this change. I highlight the current plight of organizations that seek to change the narrative of black men and uproot the tree that bears stranger fruit.