The Problem of (Not) Being a Black Man
It’s difficult for a dark-skinned male to be a black man, because you’re your own person, not the stereotype the title “black man” often connotes. I’m a human being who has to deal with the concept of blackness and the concept of masculinity because of the society I am in. The facts of my skin tone and appearance do not make me an expert on this concept of the “black man.” Truth be told, I often find the concept even more confusing than my paler fellow apes seem to. But because of where I have been positioned in society, it is not a concept I can simply walk away from. Based on a host of reasons, I am forced to deal with the concept of the black man in almost every area of my life, whether I feel it accurately represents who I actually am or not.
How Deconversion Changed My View of Masculinity
I have not always felt this way, especially when it came to the “man” part of the “black man.” As a Christian, the Bible, when read from a certain fundamentalist vantage point I tried to internalize, drew for me a clear distinction between several essential human qualities – a clear difference between what it meant to be a man, and what it meant to be a woman. Honestly, due to faith in the Bible’s definition of the “real me,” I felt a peace, as if I didn’t have to think too hard about who I was – the Bible solved much of the problem for me. Yes, this made me uncomfortable, as well – my emotions were frequently much stronger, for example, than those of the ideal man of the Bible preached from the pulpit – but balanced with this discomfort was the thought that these discrepencies with the essential male were not who I really, actually was. Underneath it all, I was who I was supposed to be, I thought; the trouble was realizing that.
When I left Christianity, I lost any sense of there being an “essential” man underneath it all. I now see myself as constantly being revealed by my actions and feelings, many of which don’t coincide with ideal concepts of masculinity that are outlined in the Bible. True, there were still social expectations, and some things I did made myself and others happier than other things I did, but nothing I do is a deviation from my God-ordained “essence.”
During this transition in thought from Christianity, then, I realized that manhood was not an innate God-given quality I possessed, but a social ideal I aspired to. I was not a “real man” underneath it all. These other parts of me weren’t just fake extra parts of me I had to prune off; they were expressions of who I really was. And who I really was never fulfilled the definition of a “manly” man, which means that the concept of being a man in this Judeo-Christian culture I’m in doesn’t fully coincide with the person I am. And yet, because of the person I am and the way I look, I have to deal with the expectation that I fulfill the concept of being a man day in, day out; where I don’t, people look at me as if I’m doing something wrong or even suspiciously, as if I’m acting a role and not being the real, genuine, down-to-earth me.
So although I don’t fit my culture’s ideal of masculinity, I live in a culture in which a certain masculinity is expected of me, and this means I often have to figure out what is expected of me and deal with it as a side-effect of existing in the world. I am far from an expert on being a man, but I have been given the unasked-for responsibility of defining manhood and verifying or defying definitions of manhood with every step I take if I want to understand how others view me.
And because of my skin tone this role is even more expected and regulated and defined and debated. I’m not just expected to act like a man, but as a BLACK man.
A few similar transformations
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InzsWmWcJ-4[/youtube]
Why I Don’t Know About Blackness
I’m not an expert on blackness. Blackness is concept constructed by people of many different shades of skin color in this country, and several people – primarily lighter-skinned people, historically speaking – have created this idea of “blackness” and, because of my skin tone, invested me with it, largely without my consent. The prisoner is not an expert on the incarceration system, but he does have experience in it that he uses to survive, and the experience of being locked in the identity of “black” is very similar. I don’t know the ins and outs of the institutional racism that has constructed this definition of blackness, but I do experience them, as have others, and we can speak to this experience and voice the anger included in this experience, although it is often formed and brought into being by forces we don’t understand.
The “black man” in the United States is not a human being; it is a story, a fairy tale, a product of a ménage a trois between dominant political, social, and religious ideologies. As is the “white man” – the difference is who the concept of the “black man” imprisons, and who the concept of the “white man” empowers.
- What Does It Mean To Be A Black Man In America Today? : NPR “Racism is very sophisticated now. It’s all sort of disguised, but they still let you know you’re black… I don’t want to internalize all that stuff. That’s that person’s problem.”
Which is why the problem of the black man is not really my problem. I mean, it is in the sense that it was forced on me, and I am proclaimed guilty of the charge. It is my problem in the sense that I am the man behind the bars of a prescribed public identity. But it’s not in the sense that I am innocent of the identity I am labeled with. I have to deal with what it means to be a black man, but what it means to be a “black man” isn’t me. It’s a concept out there that I have to deal with every time I step my foot out my front door or someone knows what I look like in interacting with them.
The Difficulty of Answering the Question: What Can White People Do About White Privilege?
This is why it is so difficult to answer the questions people ask me because they presume I am an expert on being a black man. I am asked, for example, what the white man can do about “white privilege” and thus ensure black people are treated more fairly. This problem is rather difficult. Yes, I have a motive to figure out the answer, just as the falsely convicted man has a motive to figure out the law so he can leave the prison walls. So, given that, it’s likely I know a little more than someone with a different skin tone, if all other variables were equal. I also know what the acts of white privilege FEEL like, like the prisoner knows what it feels like to be patrolled by guards. But when it comes to the institutions behind the privilege, when it comes to navigating the beauracracy in a way that would release me from my chains, my resources are about as limited as the next person’s; the major difference is my motivation.
- Why I hate being a black man | Orville Lloyd Douglas | Comment is free | The Guardian “A lot of the time I feel like my skin color is like my personal prison, something that I have no control over, for I am judged just because of the way I look.”
It is difficult, to use a more concrete and common example, to accurately inform a “white man” whether it’s ever OK to use the n-word. To be sure, the idea of the “white man” is a construct, as well, and when you break it down like that – the concept of the white man calling someone the n-word clearly is problematic to almost anyone with a remote sense of the history of that word. But I can really only tell you how it feels – I can’t necessarily tell you all the times you can and can’t use it, or when it officially becomes OK, because it’s not really my word. The word was invented before me. It has nothing to do with me. It is a false accusation manufactured by people before my time. It’s a tool that can do great damage, and it makes me nervous when you wield it, but I’m not the expert on it and what it represents because it’s not really my word. The people who originally used the n-word were lighter skinned.
To come back to the question of what a white man can do about “white privilege” – I think the first step is to admit that the idea of the black man is a rampant myth that I and others are trapped in. The next step is not to deny the myth’s existence by pretending the “black man” is a “white man” (thus exchanging one myth for another in an unconvincing way that further privileges whiteness) but by seeing the “black man” as a constructed identity and doing the hard work of taking it apart. Not as something I am, but as a concept I’m trapped in. Help me try to figure it out – do some reading, try to do some understanding, and gradually challenge the parts of society that use the “black man” identity to overdefine and limit people.
Not quite the solution…
Why Should We Care?
I think you do have somewhat of a vested interest in this project. I haven’t always thought this – I used to wonder why on earth a paler-skinned individual would be interested in black masculinity. What would motivate someone to study the concept, outside of being trapped in the identity of a “black man”? But, again, the concept of the “black man” is not my creation. It is a creation of society, and understanding it can help us better understand more than just my own personal position, but also society in general and how it functions and responds to the way we act. It can, then, inform the way you deal with society, the way you vote, the way you think of yourself and others as being in society. In short, it can make you more informed in changing and dealing with society the way you’d like to.
In the face of God’s absence, it seems that this is a new, important project. We as human beings get to figure out and redefine society; we can’t leave it up to God’s supposed utopic vision. This is, for me, a stronger incentive for me to understand black masculinity – and, in the process, race and gender in general – not because I see myself as fulfilling a certain defined race and gender, but because these concepts are the ones that imprison us in definitions and understanding the functions of these definitions, both in ourselves and in others, can help eventually set us free.
- Atheism and social justice: Sikivu Hutchinson on the first People of Color Beyond Faith conference – “People assume that becoming aware of white privilege means taking a “diversity” workshop or reading a few articles by Tim Wise, but it’s a lifelong process that doesn’t result in a nice shiny certificate of completion at the end.”
In saying this project is important, I’m not saying that it’s necessary for everyone to engage in it at the same intensity, of course. There does seem to be a danger in worrying so much about where you properly fit in the world that you waste the entirety of your life contemplating it, and virtually none enjoying it. It’s been said the overexamined life is not worth living, and there’s some truth to that. But I think that this knowledge can be helpful in getting beyond the iron bars of your mind in your navigation of culture. The key seems to be to use this study as a reference work, to use in preparation and as needed to ensure that the future and the present does not fulfill the requests of an empty ideal (like the desires of God) but, rather, the desires of yourself and others. Right? So when I say that my view of social issues is inseparable from my atheism, that’s part of what I mean.