I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
—Ralph Ellison, American novelist, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel Invisible Man
SEVEN
“I Can’t Breathe”: Black Men’s Fatigue
Ralph Ellison, a Black novelist and activist, wrote Invisible Man in 1952.1 The protagonist, a nameless Black man, lives in a racist existence where his personal identity is meaningless. Set in the South in the 1920s and Harlem in the 1930s, the book describes how the invisible man wrestles with the cognitive dissonance of better opportunity and the indignities of racism. As a Black man, he is perceived by dominant society as a collection of negative stereotypes rather than a whole thinking, feeling human. The invisible man says, “They see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me.”2 This helps to explain police brutality against Black men. They are killing a collection of stereotypes. The perpetrators refuse to see real, living, breathing people because the anti-Black racism directed toward Black men is so entrenched in their psyches. Not much has changed since Ellison wrote Invisible Man.
Ryon’s Story
Ryon is a renaissance Black man. He has a bachelor’s degree in human resources but prefers to work with his hands. When I met him, he worked for a local heating and air-conditioning contractor by day and by night performed other services such as hanging pictures, installing and wall-mounting smart TVs, cleaning gutters, or just about any other household repair or task you might need. He proudly declares, “I do everything!” Ryon works 12–14 hours a day, 6 days a week. He sometimes brings his preteen sons on the job to teach them the trade (and like most kids their age, they are less than enthusiastic about their father’s work). One time he even brought his toddler daughter with him because his wife had to work. Our conversations always turned to his desire to be on his own—to start his own business. He would pick my brain about entrepreneurship—its ups and downs. I strongly encouraged him to strike out on his own. I could tell that he had the wherewithal to make it work. About 18 months ago he left his job and started a company called Skilled Hands on Demand.
He was at my house on a Saturday just as I was starting this chapter. I am writing this in the throes of COVID-19 (April 2020). I asked him how his business was faring, and he excitedly answered, “Booming.” He said he does so many different things that there is always a need for his services. He was at my house to do the spring tune-up on the air conditioning system and change the air filters. He told me that I was his fourth call of the day. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. When he left my house, he was going to mount another television.
The conversation turned to his previous employer. He said that he was so glad that he had left because he had been passed over for two promotions. The first time, he was told that he was so good at his current role that they really needed to keep him in that position. He said that they promoted a white man with less experience. The next time, he was told that he had sold too many of a particular service. He is still baffled by that one.
As we continued to talk about his business, he said, “I know that I have to be twice as good. I can’t mess up because as it is, when I show up, white people and sometimes even Black people are surprised, and I can see that they are skeptical.” He said that as a Black man, even though he is only five feet, five inches tall and slightly built, he senses the fear. “I have to spend more time building rapport and disarming their anxiety. It’s crazy, but it is worth it. It is still better than working for my previous employer. I have been doing a lot of reading on the psychology of racism, and even though I just want to do a good job and make a good living for my family, I have to deal with the race stuff too. It is an added burden. It is life.”
Everybody Loves Bobby
Bobby (not his real name) was a high-ranking Black man in a major corporation. Over the 30 years that he was with the company, he was consistently given the hardest assignments in various manufacturing plants and the fewest resources. He was the documented “turn-around guy.” He would be assigned to the lowest-performing unit and was expected to make it profitable within six months to a year. He was so good at it that he received many accolades and external awards for these accomplishments.
When I met Bobby, he was excited about his new role in diversity and inclusion. In the job for just over a year, he approached it as a turn-around opportunity. He boasted about how he had added structure and outcomes for the employee resource groups so that they could clearly show how they added value to the company. Drawing on his manufacturing acumen, he put into place a key performance indicators (KPIs) process. He had a wall in his office for each of the employee resource groups that demonstrated their yearly accomplishments.
Everybody at the company seemed to know, love, and respect Bobby. When you mentioned his name, people would smile and say, He is a great guy.
Bobby decided to retire early because it was obvious that the company was not really serious about diversity and inclusion. He was never able to meet with the CEO to discuss the strategy, and there was little follow-through on the agreed-on objectives. He left the company without receiving the retirement party that was customary (microinvalidation, as described in chapter 6), burned out and disappointed that his accomplishments were unrecognized. He said he felt a heavy burden every day coming into work, knowing that he would have to work twice as hard for any little “win” to move the diversity agenda. When I asked him how he is doing now as an independent consultant in manufacturing operations, he said “fantastic”—a great burden had been lifted from him.
I share Ryon’s and Bobby’s stories because we do not hear much about the Ryons and the Bobbys of the world. They are invisible. The everyday Black men who are working overtime hard, striving, married with children, just trying to build a better life. More often than not, the picture that is painted of the Black man in America has not changed much since slavery—that of a scary, threatening, criminal, less-than-human menace to society.
Nice, Scary, Hostile, Deviant?
Terrence Harewood, a friend and consultant to The Winters Group, is a college professor. He recounted a story about himself and a Black male colleague on their first day in their doctoral program. They were the only two Black men in the program. On the first day, students were asked to introduce themselves. At a break, two white women came up to them and said, “We were just talking about you two. You are so nice.” Terrence said that all he and the other Black student did was say their names and where they were from. “How could they possibly know from these brief introductions whether or not we were ‘nice’?” Terrence said he felt that was code for, “We do not expect Black men to be nice. You are not scary like our image of Black men.” He said he feels the burden all the time of thinking about, “Am I being nice enough so they will not see my over six-foot frame and dark skin as a threat? I am tired of having to worry about if I am nice enough. Whose discomfort is at stake to ensure that they are comfortable?” While, on the surface, “nice” is a positive description, it can be said in ways that imply, You are different—not the scary, angry Black man. It is a microinsult, as described in chapter 6.
Even a Black Santa Claus can be scary to white people. I was in a CVS near the Christmas holidays in 2019. I walked in and saw two five-foot Santa Clauses on display, one white and one Black. As I passed them, I said to myself, “How inclusive.” I was happy to see the diversity and acknowledgment that Santa could actually be a person of color. After picking up a prescription, I was leaving the store, passing the Santas again, and a white couple was entering. I overheard the woman say, “Oh, that Black Santa Claus is so scary.” I left thinking, If she thinks a statue of a Black Santa is scary, what must she think about live Black men? The only difference between the white and Black Santa was the color of the paint used for their faces.
While there are many characterizations of Black men as scary, monstrous types, scholars often point to D. W. Griffith’s highly successful yet very controversial 1915 silent film, The Birth of a Nation,3 which sadistically portrays Black men as unintelligent, lazy, and sexually aggressive, especially toward white women. It provides a justification for the KKK to protect the world from dangerous Black men. Protests from civil rights groups calling for discontinuation of its showing were ignored, and the film in fact led to increased violence against Blacks. My son, Joseph Winters, professor of religious studies at Duke University, asserts in his book, Hope Draped in Black: Race, Melancholy, and the Agony of Progress,4 that the portrayals of Black men and women on the big screen often still perpetuate negative stereotypes today. In the last chapter, I mentioned the critique that Halle Berry’s role in Monster’s Ball perpetuated the hypersexualized Black woman stereotype. Winters says that Denzel Washington’s portrayal in Training Day of a rogue police detective, for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor in 2002, amplified the “fears and anxieties associated with the deviant Black male body.” 5 Some also argued that it was because he played this stereotypical role that he won the top Oscar honor and that there were earlier roles that were even more worthy, such as his portrayal of Malcom X, for which he was nominated for Best Actor in 1993.
Black men are not a monolith. However, similar to Black women, Black men share experiences that are unique to them as a group based on their identifiable characteristics, skin color and gender. While men are not usually identified as a stigmatized group like women, Black men, by and large, do not enjoy the power and privilege afforded white men based on their group membership as “men.” For example, research shows that white men often benefit from exhibiting stereotypically “masculine” behavior in the workplace. However, men of color are more likely to be penalized for the same behaviors. For example, Latinos, especially those of Mexican national origin, endure stereotypes in some settings that describe them as emotional and “macho” with negative connotations. They also may be stereotyped as too aggressive and too dominant. Black men are often stereotyped as aggressive and hostile and associated with violence and street crime.6
Tall, Dark, and Handsome?
Studies show that tall men enjoy privileges that short men do not.7 For example, women find tall men more attractive. Tall men are more likely to succeed in business. Sixty percent of CEOs are over six feet tall, while only 15 percent of the male population is over six feet. Tall men make more money than short men. For every additional inch of height, men make on average $800 more per year. (Note: The median income of a Black man in 2017 was $41,347, compared with $60,388 for white men.)
However, these favorable perceptions do not hold true for Black men. The taller the Black man, the more threatening he is perceived to be. Based on research conducted by psychologists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for every one white man over six feet four stopped by the police, 6.2 Black men were stopped. In another study, where 318 participants were asked to look at photographs of 16 young men, half white and half Black, the taller the white subjects, the more likely they were rated as competent and nonthreatening. The opposite was true for the Black subjects. They were rated as incompetent and threatening.8 There is an interesting caveat, however. When “threat” is removed from the equation, tall black men, like tall white men, project the same aura of competence. The researchers concluded that a Black male business executive may be positively perceived at a board meeting—and then negatively stereotyped when he takes off his suit and goes for a run.
There are numerous stories of professional Black men who say that even if they are going into the office on a weekend, they dress in business attire for fear of being questioned by security. Even on “casual Fridays,” Black men often are still very mindful of how their “look” may trigger negative stereotypes and are more apt to dress more formally—and definitely not wear a hoodie. Hillary Clinton declared in a campaign speech in 2015 that even “open-minded white people” are sometimes afraid of hoodie-wearing Black men. Black men often work hard to avoid stereotype threats. This extra emotional labor of constantly wondering whether you look threatening is fatiguing.
Two Black men, Andre Wright and Jason Sole, started the Humanize My Hoodie movement (figure 7.1) as a part of Born Leaders United to destigmatize clothing trends associated with BIPOC.9 The movement includes a book, Humanize My Hoodie, allyship workshops, and a clothing line. “We seek to create a world in which our fashion isn’t probable cause for us to be slain in the streets,” the founders say on their website. They claim that wearing their hoodie has had a positive impact on reversing the negative stereotype.
Figure 7.1. Humanize My Hoodie
Source: Used with permission of Born Leaders United.10
While Black women may consider more melanin to be a desirable trait for Black men, in general, light skin color is perceived as better than, more desirable, and less threatening than dark skin. A University of Georgia study with 240 subjects found that a light-skinned Black man with a bachelor’s degree was more likely to be hired than a dark-skinned Black man with an MBA.11 University of San Francisco researchers conducted a study that revealed that educated Black men are remembered by subjects as having lighter skin. The results indicated that participants who were shown the word “educated” had more memory errors and often chose the photos with a lighter-skinned Black man when asked to recall the face they originally saw with darker skin.12
Based on a statistical study of the effects of skin tone on wages conducted in 2018 by researchers from several universities, the authors concluded that taller males with darker skin are paid less. As a matter of fact, education made the disparity worse. Dark-skinned college-educated men had even lower earnings compared with individuals with lighter skin. For every one-unit increase in the darkness of skin tone (on a 10-point scale with zero being the lightest and 10 being the darkest), annual real wages decline by $463.88.13 As stated earlier, height penalizes Black men’s salary, and when you add the decrease based on skin tone, it is a double whammy. In this study, skin tone did not affect Black women’s salaries.
On Guard
Negative stereotypes put Black men on guard in the workplace. At least 25 percent of men of color report being on guard in the workplace.14 Black men and women often resort to code switching, adjusting their style of speech, appearance, behavior, and expression in ways that will optimize the comfort of the dominant group in the workplace (white people). Black men, especially tall ones, are often assumed to have prowess in sports. “You must be good at basketball” is a statement my son, Joe, often heard because of his six-foot-four frame. He was a much better scholar than he was an athlete (microinvalidation). The stereotypes of “the good” Black men as entertainers, sports figures, or musicians and not business leaders or scholars cause cognitive dissonance for many whites and frustration and fatigue for Black men.
Whether educated or not, Black men continue to conjure up images of the “boogeyman,” and it is detrimental to their health, income, safety, and overall well-being. Living as a Black man in America is a scary proposition. It is fatiguing.
Tokenized and Silenced
Black men, like Black women, are tokenized in many of the same ways. They are selected to be a part of a diversity committee and expected to be the voice of all Black men in the organization. Or their Black presence is desired, but their voices are not welcome. I participated in a “fireside chat” recently with the CEO of a very large company in response to the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. The virtual event was broadcast to all employees. A high-ranking Black man at the company was also invited. The virtual session was conducted by the three of us. As I understood the assignment, it was to be a one-hour question-and-answer session with me bringing the outside expertise and the Black man providing an internal perspective. I was dismayed that the process consisted of the CEO and the Black executives taking turns asking me questions for the whole hour. The Black executive’s only role was to query me. I so badly wanted to ask him to share his thoughts, and in hindsight I wish I had. It was definitely not clear to me in our prep call several days before the event that this was the only role the Black executive would play. I imagine he felt invalidated and even invisible.
An “Us or Them” Existence
The Winters Group uses a tool called the Intercultural Development Inventory15 (IDI) to access cultural competence. It is a psychometric instrument that measures one’s worldview toward difference. The first two orientations (denial and polarization) are considered monocultural worldviews, where your perspectives are shaped only by your experiences. The model proposes that at these two stages, you have a more simplistic, judgmental worldview. The next orientation is minimization, a worldview that focuses on similarities (e.g., color blind, all lives matter). The last two orientations are acceptance and adaptation. At acceptance, one has a more complex understanding of differences and is able to discern them in a nonjudgmental way. Adaptation is the ability to not only discern differences but also effectively navigate them. I more often find Black men at polarization on the continuum, representing a judgmental “us and them” worldview. When I share these results, they are usually not surprised. Responses often go something like this: “I do see the world as an ‘us and them.’ I have to constantly watch out for ‘them’ as a Black man because I know that I am hated, seen as dangerous and someone to be feared.” A vice president of a large corporation said, “We are confronted with daily situations that make you see the world as us and them. I guess to move along this continuum, I have to let go of the cuts and bruises that I have had. No matter how much I want the world to be different, it is not. It is a matter of survival, and I do not know how else to see the world. This is my reality.”
I Can’t Breathe
While Eric Garner and George Floyd literally could not breathe and tragically lost their lives, this sentiment can be figuratively applied to many Black men in America. If we use “I can’t breathe” as a metaphor for anxiety, fear, and lack of true freedom, many Black men cannot breathe.
As mentioned in chapter 4, NewsOne reported in June of this year that 83 Black men and boys have been killed by police.16 Black people are three times more likely to be killed by police. Philando Castile was shot and killed after being pulled over for a routine stop with his girlfriend and toddler in the car; Trayvon Martin, 14, was killed while walking home from the store after buying Skittles; Tamir Rice was 12 when he was shot and killed by a police officer, seconds after he came on the scene. Rice was playing with a toy gun. In each of these cases, the police officers were acquitted. According to Mapping Police Violence, 99 percent of killings by police from 2013 to 2019 have not resulted in the officers being charged with a crime.17
Black people, and Black men in particular, are more likely to be stopped by police. Based on a Stanford University study of 93 million traffic stops from 21 states between 2001 and 2017, Black motorists were 20 percent more likely to be stopped by police.18
Several years ago I was conducting a session at a country club in suburban Ohio. One of the participants, a Black male, was late for the session. It was not until the break that he shared with me that he had been stopped by the police for no apparent reason. They asked him where he was going and intimated that they do not usually see people like him in that area driving an expensive car. He told me that he was having trouble concentrating on the session because he was still shaken and angry about the experience. As it was a diversity training session, I asked him whether he wanted to share the experience with the group. He declined because he did not want to “call attention to himself” and he doubted that most would understand anyway.
Blame a Black Man Syndrome
As pointed out in chapter 3, Black men are incarcerated at three times their representation in the population. I noted that the spike in the number of incarcerations happened during the 1980s as a result of Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs initiative, which attached inordinately long sentences to drug offenses.
I also pointed out that Black men are the largest group to be exonerated for being wrongly accused of crimes that they did not commit, largely because of what can be called “blame a Black man” syndrome. This refers to white people blaming Black men for crimes they committed themselves or making false accusations that are not investigated by law enforcement because they are so “believable” in light of entrenched stereotypes of Black men as criminals.
One of the most famous instances of this was when Susan Smith killed her two young children but blamed it on some imaginary Black man and immediately police started an all-out search for “him.” Amanda Knox blamed a Black man when she was accused of killing her roommate in Italy. It left the falsely accused man, Diya “Patrick” Lumumba, a local business owner, bankrupt. There is a pattern, based on negative biases about Black men and positive ones about white women, that pushes law enforcement to aggressively pursue the alleged perpetrator. As mentioned in the preface, Amy Cooper accused a Black birdwatcher (Christian Cooper—not related) in Central Park of threatening her and her dog because he requested that she follow the park’s leash regulations. In video recorded by Christian Cooper, Amy Cooper pretends to be in imminent danger, calling 911 and screaming for the police to hurry because an African American man is threatening her.
It feeds the stereotype from The Birth of a Nation and other portrayals that Black men are violent and obsessed with white women, necessitating extra protection for them from Black men.
Mass Incarceration
As discussed in chapter 3, mass incarceration is a serious social issue in this country that disproportionately affects Black and Brown people and Black men in particular. Black men account for 6 percent of the population; however, 15 percent of Black men in the United States have been to prison, compared with 6 percent of all adult men, and social scientists predict that one in three Black men will face prison time during their lifetime. As stated earlier, Black people also account for 47 percent of the exonerations.
Black men are more likely to be incarcerated on drug charges, and white men are more likely to be sent to rehabilitation. Eighty percent of the incarcerated in federal prisons for drug offenses are Black.19 Black people are no more likely to use drugs than white people. Black men get longer sentences and have higher rates of recidivism because of entrenched systems that make it difficult to reenter society.
In a report in 2018 to the United Nations from the Sentencing Project on the racial disparities in the US criminal justice system, recommendations to the UN special rapporteur included ending the War on Drugs to reduce the number of low-level drug offenders prosecuted in federal court; eliminating mandatory minimum sentences; not retaining defendants pretrial because they cannot afford bail if they do not pose a safety or flight risk; requiring racial impact statements for proposed sentencing policies; and requiring implicit bias training at every level of the criminal justice system, among others.20 I do not think that any of these recommendations has gained traction.
Mass incarceration of Black men, in part, explains why Black people are much less likely to be married. In 2016 in the United States, 29 percent of Black people were married, compared with 48 percent of all Americans.21 There is a shortage of eligible Black men. Interestingly, until the 1960s Black and white rates of marriage were essentially the same, and then there was steep widening of the gap that persists today. It was during this time that the rates of mass incarceration began to increase sharply for Black men. Incarceration rates are more than 500 percent higher than they were 40 years ago. Another factor contributing to lower marriage rates is job instability for Black men. According to a study conducted by the Census Bureau and National Bureau of Economic Research, Black men fare worse economically than white men even if they are raised in households with similar incomes and educated similarly. A Black boy brought up in a wealthy family is as likely to become poor in adulthood as he is to remain prosperous.22 Lower marriage rates negatively affect chances for economic stability, as highlighted in chapter 3.
Mass incarceration is also a public health issue. During the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, the horrors of the prison system were once again illuminated. Overcrowding and poor sanitation put prisoners at higher risk. Many Black men in prison are already health compromised. Reports of guards and prisoners testing positive for COVID-19 were especially sobering since quarantines are nearly impossible among incarcerated populations. To address this, some jurisdictions released prisoners. In doing so, it was also re-uncovered that many Black men were in prison for minor offenses and had sentences disproportionately longer than their white counterparts for the same offense.23
Mass incarceration is a well-entrenched system to perpetuate structural racism. It affects every aspect of one’s life from socioeconomics to voting, employment, and personal relationships. It is a form of genocide.
Man Up with Barber Shop Therapy and Healing for Black Men
I pointed out in chapter 4 that the life expectancy of Black men is the lowest of every group—almost a decade lower than that of white women. I also shared how Black men are more likely than other segments of the population to have undiagnosed or poorly managed chronic conditions (e.g., diabetes, cancers, heart disease). For example, prostate cancer is the most common illness among men, and Black men are more likely to get it and twice as likely to succumb to it. Additionally, Black men are the only demographic group for which homicide is one of the top five causes of death.24
Black men are also more likely to delay seeking medical care. There are various reasons for not seeking care, including lack of access. Black men are more likely to live in poverty than their white counterparts and less likely to have health insurance. Even with a job, more Black men, like Black women, are employed in industries that do not offer health insurance.
Lack of trust is also a significant factor in Black men not seeking care. I highlighted the issue of trust in chapter 4, which is tied to the widespread experimentation on Black people without our approval throughout history. The most famous involving Black men is perhaps the Tuskegee syphilis study. A study in Harvard Business Review in 2018 reported that Black men were more likely to seek treatment when the physician was also Black because of a greater level of trust.25
Machoism is also a factor. Research shows that Black men are the least likely to seek out mental health support because of the “tough guy” syndrome. The Michigan-based Man Up Man Down research program studies the physical and emotional health of Black men. Based on focus group research in six cities from 2010 to 2018, the researchers found some consistent themes when they asked what it means to be a “real man,” including being tough and self-sufficient, and they found that many Black men embrace the tough-guy syndrome as a source of self-esteem and self-respect. The researchers assert that the syndrome contributes to Black men being the least likely to seek mental health services—almost half as likely as white men.26
Black men often receive “counseling” from their barbers, known as “barbershop therapy.” They have found that this is a safe, nonjudgmental, trusting environment where they are able to unload their burdens. The Confess Project, a nonprofit based in Little Rock, Arkansas, is training barbers to be front-line counselors for clients who are depressed or traumatized. The initiative is also now in Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana. Its website asks, “Ever been told to ‘man up’ when all you wanted to do is cry? Wished there was someone to talk to who understood where you were coming from? Had a moment when all the -isms in life were too much to bear? We’ve been there.”27
Jeff Johnson, who had a career as a journalist, producer, and TV host, now runs Men Thrive,28 a nonprofit that provides “a community that is curated to proclaim the generational toxic stress, depression, and anxiety standing in the way of us [Black men] living our best lives as something that must end.” Men Thrive debunks the narrative that Black men must hide their feelings, be tough, and “fix their faces” (don’t show emotion). Johnson’s organization seeks to reprogram the brain with self-mastery tools and positive affirmations in support of Black men “showing up whole, operating with joy, and living with power.”
Show Me Some Respect
What does it mean today to be a Black man in the United States? Ralph Ellison’s characterization of his protagonist as “invisible” is an apt metaphor for the historical and current social realities for many Black boys and men. Ellison’s story ends with the “invisible man” being chased by police during a riot in Harlem and falling into a manhole in the middle of the street. The police put the cover of the manhole back in place, trapping the man in the hole. “I’m an invisible man and it placed me in a hole—or showed me the hole I was in, if you will—and I reluctantly accepted the fact,”29 writes Ellison. Many Black men today can relate to the character’s experience of feeling trapped in a hole and irrelevant. The Winters Group conducted healing sessions with Black employees from several companies at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. Black men used words like “invisible,” “ignored,” “isolated,” “unheard,” “threatening,” “misunderstood,” “muzzled,” and “unsafe” to describe their existence in the workplace.
They carry the weight of invisibleness with many different and sometimes destructive responses. Black men have a number of different personas, including nurturing father figure; supportive partner; strong, don’t-show-emotion macho man; laid back; (nothing bothers me); a hard, mean outward vibe (I’ll kick your ass if you mess with me). Behind these different personas hide deep wounds from intergenerational denigration. As a result of centuries of mistreatment and being characterized as subhuman, sexually aggressive, threatening, and lazy, for some, these perceptions have been internalized and take many different forms of outward behaviors on the scale from passivity to aggression—from a carefree, happy demeanor to rage. It is a part of the post-traumatic slave syndrome that Joy DeGruy describes.30
The Man Up Man Down research also found that Black men said being a real man included providing for your family, achieving the respect of others, and attaining financial success. Because Black men are more likely not to be able to provide for their families as a result of discriminatory workplace practices, they cannot achieve financial success, which means they also will not achieve the respect of others. This leads to depression, anger, and rage, which, as I pointed out earlier, more often than not goes untreated.
Black men want to be respected. For the most part they get little real respect in the white world and therefore yearn for it and even demand it from their own community. The term “diss,” which has been appropriated by most of popular culture, originated in the Black community to mean disrespect, and you should not disrespect a Black man or be ready to suffer a range of consequences, as described earlier. This deep-seated quest for respect can manifest too often in patriarchy and turning to an alternate (illegal by dominant standards) economy for income.
Patriarchy, Sexism, Misogyny, and Abuse
Patriarchy shows up in Black culture in explicit and subtle ways. One manifestation is in the church. In some Black churches, women are not allowed to be full-fledged clergy, and in some cases they are not even allowed to sit in the pulpit. I remember a number of years ago being baffled when I was asked to be the Women’s Day speaker at a church but was told that I would not be able to sit in the pulpit. I also notice how Black men often savor the prestige of being a trustee or a steward or on the deacon board. If they have a lay leadership role, they take it very seriously. The church is one of perhaps only a few places where they can get respect and also utilize talents that may be underutilized in the corporate world. Patriarchy and sexism are often defended by narrow interpretations of the Bible.
Misogynist messages are common in the hip-hop music world. Consider the case brought against rap group 2 Live Crew in 1990. They were arrested on obscenity charges for sexually explicit lyrics that denigrated Black women in their song “Nasty as You Wanna Be.” The case was later dismissed, but the controversy remains as to whether these types of lyrics in hip-hop fuel the “rape culture” and sexual violence against Black women. Henry Louis Gates Jr., a prominent Black historian at Harvard University, argued that 2 Live Crew was intending to exaggerate stereotypes about Black men and women to show how ridiculous they are and push white society’s buttons. Kimberlé Crenshaw weighed in, opposing Gates and arguing that these harmful images are still too real in the minds of many white people and that young people who listen to these messages may embody them.31
When Kobe Bryant died tragically in 2020, Snoop Dogg denigrated Gayle King publicly, using misogynist language, for bringing up the 2003 rape charges against Bryant in an interview with Lisa Leslie. He later apologized, but it brings up the complex relationship between Black men and women that dates back to slavery, when families were ripped apart. The slavery-inspired stereotypes of Black women have been internalized by some Black men.
As I pointed out in chapter 6, Black women are much more likely to face domestic violence at the hands of their partners. I also mentioned that they are more likely to “stand by their man,” even though they are three times more likely to die from domestic or intimate partner violence than white women.32 While I certainly would never condone or make excuses for this behavior, I assert that the reasons for these egregious actions are complex. I am only trying to explain that when we simply judge the behavior without exploring the root cause and the role that white supremacy plays, we may draw erroneous conclusions. As I said earlier, Black men want respect, such as that derived from the ability to provide for one’s family. With unemployment rates for Black men at twice the rate of white men since 1960, it becomes an affront to one’s manhood, and those who are not able to handle the stress may turn to violence. Black women also have their own challenges, as pointed out in chapter 6, and a couple trying to navigate the realities of racism may encounter relationship problems. This is one of the reasons for higher divorce rates33 and fewer marriages among Black people.
SUMMARY
Black men need and deserve respect. They do not want to be viewed as scary and threatening. They do not want to have to fear for their lives. They want to be able to reach their full potential without the extraordinary burden of living in a white supremacist, racist society.
Black men are fatigued by trying to play by rules that do not work for them or are changed when it looks as if they may support them.
There are many groups around the country that continue to work on the unique issues that Black men face, such as the YMCA, Boys and Girls Clubs, 100 Black Men, Black fraternities, churches, and many others. We Dream a World: The 2025 Vision for Black Men and Boys is a project of the Twenty-First Century Foundation that lays out a comprehensive agenda for reform in five key areas: education, fatherhood and families, employment and wealth, health, and criminal justice.
We have to continue to shine a light on the enormous life obstacles that structural racism and negative stereotyping present for Black men. It will take collective responsibility,34 which has also been referred to as collective guilt, a social justice concept that individuals are responsible for other people’s actions by tolerating, ignoring, or harboring them without actively collaborating in them. From collective responsibility must come collection action.
A major first step is to reframe our equity and justice work on behalf of Black men to focus on asset rather than deficit thinking and actions. What are the positive aspects of Black manhood? Focus on the unique contributions throughout history to build strong, positive self-concepts. Disrupt negative narratives in the media by holding the media accountable for more balanced reporting of Black men. As I mentioned in chapter 3, the media disproportionately uses negative portrayals of Black men which is disturbing and fatiguing.