We Real Cool

1. Black Masculinity: A Taboo Subject of Unconditional Love

Sadly, the real truth, which is a taboo to speak, is that this is a culture that does not love black males, that they are not loved by white men, white women, black women, or girls and boys.

Cultural Neglect. Black males exist in a society that fears them but does not love them, leading to a life of containment and repression. This lack of love stems from historical and ongoing stereotypes that portray them as animals, brutes, and natural-born criminals. This cultural narrative makes it difficult for black males to develop self-love and find positive self-concepts.

Brainwashing and Domination. The culture of domination thrives on sadomasochistic bonds, confusing desire with care and love. Black males are often surrounded by envy, desire, and hate, making it challenging to cultivate self-love. This environment forces them to repress their true selves for fear of attack and destruction, creating a prison of the mind.

Interrelated Systems of Oppression. Black males endure the worst impositions of gendered masculine patriarchal identity due to the intersection of race, class, and patriarchy. They are victimized by stereotypes first articulated in the nineteenth century, which continue to influence perceptions and imaginations today. The image of the brute—untamed, uncivilized, unthinking, and unfeeling—remains central to the construction of black male selfhood.

2. Plantation Patriarchy: The Genesis of Black Male Identity

The gender politics of slavery and white-supremacist domination of free black men was the school where black men from different African tribes, with different languages and value systems, learned in the “new world,” patriarchal masculinity.

Imposed Masculinity. Transplanted African men had to be taught to equate their higher status as men with the right to dominate women, learning patriarchal masculinity in the "new world." This involved accepting violence as a means to establish patriarchal power, a stark contrast to their original cultures. The gender politics of slavery became the school where black men learned to emulate the dominator model set by white masters.

Benevolent vs. Dominator Models. Enslaved black males were socialized to believe they should become benevolent patriarchs, providing and protecting for black women. However, many adopted the dominator model, using violence to control black women, mirroring the strategies of white slave-masters. This acceptance of patriarchal masculinity became an ideal reinforced by twentieth-century norms.

Resistance and Alternatives. Despite the overwhelming support for patriarchal masculinity, some black males repudiated the norms set by white oppressors. They found refuge among Native Americans, moving into tribal cultures where violence and subjugation were not the norm. Marriages between Native women and African-American men created contexts for different ways of being, counter to white Christian family life.

3. Gangsta Culture: A Perversion of the Work Ethic

Once money, and not the realization of a work ethic based on integrity and ethical values, became the sole measure of the man, more black men could enter the game.

Devaluation of Labor. Black males, whose brute labor helped build the foundation of advanced capitalism, were never paid a living wage, leading to a devaluation of the work ethic. This created a context where hustling for money, even if it meant lying and cheating, became more acceptable if it brought home the bacon. A shift in class values occurred, prioritizing money as the primary marker of individual success.

The Lure of the Streets. The drug economy surfaced in black life and was accepted because it was an outlaw job arena where big money could be made. This was seen as an alternative to wage slavery, where black males had never been able to affirm their patriarchal manhood. The "street" seduced bright young males, attracting them to a life of hustling and selling drugs.

Gangsta Culture as Patriarchal Masculinity. Mass media teaches young black males that the street will be their only home, preparing them to seek themselves and their manhood there. This media teaches that the patriarchal man is a predator, and only the strong and violent survive. Gangsta culture is the essence of patriarchal masculinity, glamorized in prisons and popular culture.

4. Schooling Black Males: Miseducation and Resistance

They have been and are taught that “thinking” is not valuable labor, that “thinking” will not help them to survive.

Intellectual Stereotypes. Black males are often perceived as lacking intellectual skills, stereotyped as being more body than mind. This perception is reinforced in schools, where thinking black men are seen as a threat. From slavery to the present day, black males have had to resist these stereotypes to acquire education.

Punishment for Thinking. Black males often describe being punished in schools for daring to think and question. The curiosity that may be deemed a sign of genius in a white male child is viewed as trouble-making when expressed by black boys. This discourages black males from engaging in critical thinking and pursuing education.

Alternative Educational Models. Black power advocates chose to work in schools, administering breakfast and tutoring, recognizing that educational systems were failing to educate black youth. Mass-based literacy programs, especially those targeting unemployed black males, are needed to rectify the failure of early schooling. Home schooling and progressive private schools that educate for critical consciousness are also important alternatives.

5. Black Male Violence: A Cycle of Pain and Domination

Violence is the norm in the United States.

Cultural Acceptance of Violence. Black men are often stereotyped as violent, but the U.S. has always been a violent place, with a perverse fascination with violence. The law of the jungle, of an eye for an eye, has played and continues to play a central role in the culture. This violence is not only shunned and dreaded but also embraced and romanticized.

Embracing the Beast. Black males who reject racist sexist stereotypes must still cope with the imposition of qualities that have no relation to their lived experience. Young black males often derive a sense of satisfaction from creating fear in others, particularly in white folks. Mainstream white culture requires and rewards black men for acting like brutal psychopaths.

The Lure of Violence. The white-supremacist patriarchal state recognized that it would be a simple matter to encourage black male fascination with violence. Black males socialized in patriarchal culture to make manhood synonymous with domination and the control of others, with the use of violence, had believed during slavery, reconstruction, and the Jim Crow era they could not claim patriarchal manhood for fear of genocidal white patriarchal backlash.

6. Sexual Acting Out: The Dehumanization of the Black Male Body

Undoubtedly, sexuality has been the site of many a black male’s fall from grace.

Racialized Sexual Fantasies. Sexuality has been the site of many black male's fall from grace due to the convergence of racist sexist thinking about the black body, which has always projected a hypersexuality. The history of the black male body begins with projections, with the imposition onto that body of white racist sexist pornographic sexual fantasies. Central to this fantasy is the idea of the black male rapist.

Reclaiming Sexuality. The end of slavery and abject subjugation in the immediate post-slavery years freed the black body from its containment within the scope of white racialized sexual fantasy. Living in a culture that eroticized domination and subordination, free black males and females worked to construct habits of being and lifestyles compatible with their unique experiences. The formation of segregated communities, which removed the black body from the white pornographic gaze, opened up a space of sexual possibility.

Compulsive Sexuality. Black males have brought to the realm of the sexual a level of compulsion that is oftentimes pathological. Sex becomes the ultimate playing field, where the quest for freedom can be pursued in a world that denies black males access to other forms of liberating power. This compulsive-obsessive fucking is represented as a form of power when in actuality it is an indication of extreme powerlessness.

7. From Angry Boys to Angry Men: The Crushing of the Black Male Spirit

I am eleven years old, giddy with the joy of fire and awed by the seeming invulnerability of my father.

Soul Murder in Childhood. Black boys are often conditioned to be victims by emotional abuse experienced at home and at school. The patriarchal socialization that insists boys should not express emotions or have emotional caretaking is most viciously and ruthlessly implicated in the early childhood socialization of black boys. This crushing of the male spirit in boyhood is soul murder.

The Imposition of Manhood. Young black males learn early that manhood is synonymous with the domination and control over others, that simply by being male they are in a position of authority that gives them the right to assert their will over others, to use coercion and/or violence to gain and maintain power. Black boys who do not want to be dominant are subjected to forms of psychological terrorism as a means of forcing them to embody patriarchal thinking.

Rage and Powerlessness. Emotionally abused black boys are filled with rage. Primed to act out they become adults who are rageoholics. There is often so much attention given the concrete material manifestations of the impact of racism and other forms of social oppression on black males that the psychological impact of early childhood abandonment is not highlighted.

8. Waiting for Daddy to Come Home: The Crisis of Black Male Parenting

Males in our nation do very little parenting.

The Absent Father. The absent man, the absent father, has been the constant sign folks point to when they want to critique black families. This is especially the case when those critiques are coming from unenlightened white folks. The underlying issue is less the absence of fathers and more the painful lack of emotional engagement by fathers, whether they are continually present or not.

The Need for Loving Caregivers. It is more important that black children have loving homes than homes where men are present. Psychologically healthy, loving single mothers and fathers raise healthy children. Dysfunctional homes where there is no love, where mother and father are present but abusive are just as damaging as dysfunctional single-parent homes.

Reclaiming Fatherhood. To address in any meaningful way the issue of emotional neglect of children by black fathers, we must first acknowledge the fact that many black folks believe fathers play no meaningful role in a child’s life. Until black people of all classes are able to place value on the active participation of black males in parenting, black boys and young men will continue to believe that their purpose is simply to sire children, that they prove their manhood in a patriarchal sense by making babies, not by taking care of them.

9. Doing the Work of Love: Relational Recovery and Healing the Hurt

Whenever I lecture on love and speak about black male and female relationships audiences always assume that I am talking about romantic bonds.

Beyond Romantic Bonds. It is important to remember that romantic relationships are just one of the bonds black males and females share, including relationships between parent and child, brother and sister, and so on. These source relationships shape the attitudes, habits of being, and modes of interacting that we bring to romantic partnerships. The collective silence in our culture about healthy black male and female relationships damages us.

Dysfunctional Families. No meaningful discussion of black male and female relationships can happen if it does not begin with a discussion of childhood, of what we learned then about appropriate social interaction between black males and females. The core reasons for dysfunction in black families is blind allegiance to patriarchal thinking about sex roles and the coupling of that thinking with rigid fundamentalist religious beliefs. Dominator culture creates family dysfunction.

Relational Skills and Healing. To heal the hurt between black males and females, we have to learn to dialogue and do active listening. Visionary black women bring a healing message that could empower black males, but they get the red alert warning from all the Big Daddy patriarchal inner voices lurking within: he should not listen to anything she has to say, she is just trying to bring him down. Black males who do listen find their inner voices silenced.

Last updated: February 27, 2025