TO BE BLACK, MALE, AND “FEMINIST”‐‐MAKING WOMANIST SPACE FOR BLACK MEN

Abstract

bell hooks says in “Reconstructing Black Masculinity” that n[c]ollectively we can break the life threatening choke‐hold patriarchal masculinity imposes on black men and create life sustaining visions of a reconstructed black masculinity that can provide black men ways to save their lives and the lives of their brothers and sisters in struggle. Toward the work of political (re)unification of the genders in black communities today, black men must acknowledge and begin to confront the existence of sexism in black liberation struggle as one of the chief obstacles empeding its advancement. Making womanist space for black men to participate in allied relation to feminist movement to oppose the opression of women means black men going against the grain of the racist and sexist mythology of black manhood and masculinity in the U.S. Its underlying premise rooted in white supremacist patriarchal ideology continues to foster the idea that we pose a racial and sexual threat to American society such that our bodies exist to be feared, brutalized, imprisoned, annihilated‐made invisible.

Citation

Lemons, G.L. (1997), "TO BE BLACK, MALE, AND “FEMINIST”‐‐MAKING WOMANIST SPACE FOR BLACK MEN", International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 17 No. 1/2, pp. 35-61. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb013291