The Construction and Rearticulation of Race in a Post-Racial America
by
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Black
masculinity and the civil rights movement
In America, slavery and its aftermath seemed to have permanently
subordinated black male masculinity. The civil rights movement held the promise
of liberating those subordinated masculinities in that it provided black men
with the ability to regain their dignity. That dignity had been taken away from
them in part by a social custom that allowed white people to call them “boy,”
regardless of their age or position. The movement’s leaders had hoped that by
fighting for equality of opportunity, black male masculinity would be
liberated. However, legislation and movement, no matter how fervent, could not
easily liberate subordinated masculinity. Slavery, Jim Crow, and racism had conflated black male masculinity with
sexuality. Thus, for whites and some blacks, black male masculinity and
sexuality were one in the same.
Given the conflation of sexuality and masculinity, black men would be
not men, but sex fiends. Prior to the civil rights movement, black men would be
lynched for simply looking at a white woman. This was the power of subordinated
masculinity. Many whites saw the movement as robbing them of that power. In
fact, many whites were simply horrified that the civil rights era gave black
men the freedom to sleep with white women and to procreate. The civil rights
movement, it seemed, was responsible for defiling the “southern belle.” The
hard work, the struggle, and the deaths at the hands of whites all culminated
in blacks moving closer to “the promised land.” However, it was not only whites
who would conflate black masculinity and black male sexuality. Prior to the
movement, whites handed black men their penises through lynching. After the civil
rights movement, many black men would now choose to demonstrate their masculinity
by literally and metaphorically grabbing their own penises and holding them as the
ultimate sign of black manhood.
Perhaps I expected the movement to deal not only with outward
manifestations of hate; but also with the inward manifestation of self-hate. Internalized
oppression is the process by which many blacks view images put forth by whites
and the media of blacks as worthless, shiftless, lazy, incapable, criminal, infantile,
and predisposed to violence and begin to believe them. More importantly, many
of us recreate those images of ourselves through our words, thoughts, actions,
and a perversion of “black” culture. Furthermore, with the advent of technology,
we now mass-produce this internalized oppression for all to consume.
Perhaps one of the most significant social and cultural changes to take
place during the post-civil rights era has been the attempt by blacks to
reclaim black art and culture through the celebration of black music. Among the
most successful and controversial has been the emergence of rap music.[1]
[1] Some critics will, no
doubt, criticize my generic use of the term “rap music” as overbroad, in that I
do not distinguish between “gansta rap,” “hip-hop,” and the wider hip-hop
culture. They will also accuse me of having engaged in a superficial and
cursory analysis of the genre that they claim is overly complex and fraught
with contradictions. My response is simple: This is not an attempt to
deconstruct the so-called complexities. Many people have already done that.
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About the Book
In my view, The Negro Problem in 2008 is part law, part politics, part oppression, part internalized oppression and part ideology. As America becomes more polarized into red states and blues states, into liberals and conservatives, into right, left, and even further into black and white, racism has become even more pronounced if not more difficult to identify. The Negro Problem of 2008 is helped along willingly by blacks whose sense of inferiority and internalized oppression so blind them that they too deal in oppressive and denigrating images for profits. Working hand in hand with the white executives who profit from those images and the white liberals who justify this denigration, they too add grist to the mill of oppression and exclusion.
Members of the American media have moved from reporting the news to advancing their opinions and discussing race in a roundabout way, which they claim is race neutral, but which is in fact race conscious. How has their unfettered power defined the coverage of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary? What role does rap music, with its revival of the most vile and base stereotypes of black men from slavery and the Jim Crow era and its attendant culture of debauchery, play in stoking racial subordination and domination? Does the fact that so many rap artists are black provide them with the veritable black pass to lyrically and virtually debase and defile black women and themselves that whites, by virtue of their whiteness, are denied?
About the Author
Christopher J. Metzler, PhD is Associate Dean of Human Resources for the Masters of Professional Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining Georgetown University, he was on the faculty at Cornell University’s ILR School where he directed the EEO and Diversity Studies program. At Cornell, he created the nation’s first certification program for diversity professionals and established The Chief Diversity Officers’ Roundtable. He is also the author of The Competencies of the Chief Diversity Officers (2008), the first comprehensive analysis of CDO competencies to date. He was also an adjunct Associate Professor at CUNY (The City University of New York) where he taught Civil Rights among other courses. Prior to entering higher education, he headed the strategic issues and research practice at an international consulting firm and provided advice to multinational corporations and governments on human rights, human capital, equality, corporate social responsibility, discrimination and diversity. He lectures globally on diversity, global employment practices, human resources and comparative employment systems.