Social Commentary and Art Focused on Masculinist Issues
Here, at Labancamy Jankins, we seek to promote art and dialogue in the furtherance of overcoming the failure of black men to reinvent the self and assume supportive masculine agency.[1] The development of some African American men has been fragmented, splintered by both the heritage of slavery and the urgencies of a new, technological twenty-first century America that is no longer interested in finding a place for them. The dehumanizing effects of slavery behind, and the lure of the mechanized metropolitan milieu before, distorted those elements of African American culture which at one time could have fortified African American manhood for these men.[2] As early as 1845 with the release of Frederick Douglass’s autobiography, Narrative of the Life, African American artists and social commentators began to seek ways to solve the twin sensibilities of rage and defiance so inherent to the once enslaved. African American thinkers constructed a purposive masculinity as a countermeasure to claims of brutality and barbarity in order to deflect claims of inferiority that would surely materialize in the wake of expressions of black anger: African American spokespersons saw the crucial test of black fitness to be whether or not black men were, in fact, manly. The middle-class definitions of manliness used in the development of black masculinity contained the following crucial ingredients: nobility, intelligence, strength, articulateness, loyalty, virtue, rationality, courage, self-control, courtliness, honesty and physical attractiveness as defined in white Western European terms.[3] For African American men this is problematic; black men, at best, have a tenuous hold on these definitions. Few of the elements of middle-class manhood can be attributed to blackness. Attempting to live according to such principles often leads to spiritual demise.
Nevertheless, middle-class patriarchal masculinity has been used as the ideal criteria by which America raises her young boys to men. And, as a result, African American men are trapped in cyclical, overdetermined roles of dominance, which have, at times, led to feelings of failure or feelings of lack.[4] The failure of the folk spirit to embrace modernity during the Migration involved the failure of black male entelechy to carry that spirit as revealed in art – song and music, literature, drawing and painting - to Northern environs.[5] Not hearing or seeing or feeling that spirit as expressed in art, some African American men seem to suffer from forms of impotence, from a kind of generalized inadequacy that speaks to aimlessness. To combat such impotence, we need to develop concepts of masculinity that work for us, in the 21st century. And in doing so, let us not forget that the travail of black mothers should be the conduit through which black sons acquire an understanding of masculinity that is at once both sexual and political, and impediments to this mean a confusion that could lead, at least, to spiritual demise.[6]
Let us begin the quest for more useful concepts of masculinity!
[1] Nathan Grant, Masculinist Impulses: Toomer, Hurston, Black Writing, and Modernity (Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2004), 43.
[2] Ibid., 24.
[3] Ibid., 16-17.
[4] Ibid., 26.
[5] Ibid., 62-63.
[6] Ibid., 65.
Here, at Labancamy Jankins, we seek to promote art and dialogue in the furtherance of overcoming the failure of black men to reinvent the self and assume supportive masculine agency.[1] The development of some African American men has been fragmented, splintered by both the heritage of slavery and the urgencies of a new, technological twenty-first century America that is no longer interested in finding a place for them. The dehumanizing effects of slavery behind, and the lure of the mechanized metropolitan milieu before, distorted those elements of African American culture which at one time could have fortified African American manhood for these men.[2] As early as 1845 with the release of Frederick Douglass’s autobiography, Narrative of the Life, African American artists and social commentators began to seek ways to solve the twin sensibilities of rage and defiance so inherent to the once enslaved. African American thinkers constructed a purposive masculinity as a countermeasure to claims of brutality and barbarity in order to deflect claims of inferiority that would surely materialize in the wake of expressions of black anger: African American spokespersons saw the crucial test of black fitness to be whether or not black men were, in fact, manly. The middle-class definitions of manliness used in the development of black masculinity contained the following crucial ingredients: nobility, intelligence, strength, articulateness, loyalty, virtue, rationality, courage, self-control, courtliness, honesty and physical attractiveness as defined in white Western European terms.[3] For African American men this is problematic; black men, at best, have a tenuous hold on these definitions. Few of the elements of middle-class manhood can be attributed to blackness. Attempting to live according to such principles often leads to spiritual demise.
Nevertheless, middle-class patriarchal masculinity has been used as the ideal criteria by which America raises her young boys to men. And, as a result, African American men are trapped in cyclical, overdetermined roles of dominance, which have, at times, led to feelings of failure or feelings of lack.[4] The failure of the folk spirit to embrace modernity during the Migration involved the failure of black male entelechy to carry that spirit as revealed in art – song and music, literature, drawing and painting - to Northern environs.[5] Not hearing or seeing or feeling that spirit as expressed in art, some African American men seem to suffer from forms of impotence, from a kind of generalized inadequacy that speaks to aimlessness. To combat such impotence, we need to develop concepts of masculinity that work for us, in the 21st century. And in doing so, let us not forget that the travail of black mothers should be the conduit through which black sons acquire an understanding of masculinity that is at once both sexual and political, and impediments to this mean a confusion that could lead, at least, to spiritual demise.[6]
Let us begin the quest for more useful concepts of masculinity!
[1] Nathan Grant, Masculinist Impulses: Toomer, Hurston, Black Writing, and Modernity (Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2004), 43.
[2] Ibid., 24.
[3] Ibid., 16-17.
[4] Ibid., 26.
[5] Ibid., 62-63.
[6] Ibid., 65.