Redefining Black Masculinity In The Ashes of #MeToo

Silverback's Note: Happy New Year! The Soulful Silverback turns 1 year old this month and we're excited to continue delivering heartfelt musings...

The active volcano, known throughout our history as women's movement, has once again erupted. Over the last three years, the details of far too many harrowing accounts from women who suffered systematic abuse at the hands of men who suffered no consequences for those actions. The scorched earth that the lava flow of these accounts is leaving behind is set to reshape our culture in the coming months and years. Buried beneath the volcanic ash, like the ancient city of Pompeii, remains a redefining of masculinity. Specifically for me, is how is masculinity and black masculinity are evolving in the era of the #MeToo movement

What Is A Man?

For over a decade, I’ve continued to grapple with various existential questions in an effort to gain a deeper understanding of who I am. One of those questions is: what is a man? As a cisgender man in the twenty-first century I believe that regardless of sex, men and women have more in common physically and physiologically than we are different. However, one of our main differences lies in the different amounts of hormones that our bodies produce. While I am no medical expert, my rudimentary explanation of our gender differences is that women have much higher levels of estrogen than men and men have much higher levels of testosterone than women. So in its simplest form testosterone has literally been a driving force in my growth from a child to a man.

What Is the U.S. Black Experience?

Now that you have an understanding of what my definition of what a man is let's talk about what it means to be black. But more specifically, a black person, in the United States, in the twenty-first century. There are over forty million black people in the U.S. and likely over forty million ways to be black. However, given the history of how we arrived in the Americas from Africa, most of us across the diaspora can share in an experience of pain. Mostly the pain of the black experience in this country and also the pain of being unable to directly trace back the roots of your stolen lineage - and all the ripple effect of those truths. I recently completed a DNA analysis and the results left me with more questions than answers and reminded of the pain of our stolen history. It left me with feelings of being displaced in the world; like a nomad where you’ve never been welcomed in your country of birth nor your country of origin. Wrestling with this reality and other truths can be painful at times.

What Is Masculinity?

In general, a mix of where power is aligned and the images that our culture is subject to plays a significant role in defining masculinity. Personally, I believe culture is like a giant ocean and the ocean current is the power that dictates the direction in which people swim in that culture. For far too long, this patriarchal culture has dictated that men should show strength at all costs. This testosterone-fueled show of strength lead to any action or ideology that weren’t aligned with strength were discarded and/or shamed so that it became culturally unacceptable to act in that manner. This strength often dictated that women and people of color were less than when compared to the power of men. This ideology, in large part, contributed to what has become toxic masculinity. More specifically, the unchecked power of the oppressor resulting in the suffering of the oppressed with no repercussions for actions.

What is Black Masculinity?

If the previous three paragraphs were locomotives, then in a lot of ways black masculinity is like three conflicting ideas speeding to fit into one small space; space we were never meant to occupy. But in a lot of ways, black masculinity is a lot like white masculinity minus the power, privilege, and freedoms against systematic mass incarceration. In a lot of ways, our record of misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia have aligned with the system of oppression that our white male counterparts have thrived on.

So you see if masculinity is defined by neglecting weakness to show strength at all costs, then black men have never been provided a healthy space to deal with the intrinsic pain that comes along with our history. We’ve had to bury that pain and do our best to work for towards our equal share of earned power while we are dealing with unresolved pain. While the anger that stems from this pain is often accepted, this raw unresolved pain often leads men to hurt others. That inability to deal with that pain prevents deep connection with family, friends, and lovers. That unresolved pain combined with the inability to connect prevents men from engaging in the entire spectrum of emotions from unbridled joy to deep depression. The culture has dictated to men that showing that range of emotions, being vulnerable to those emotions, and communicating those emotions is conduct unbecoming of a man.

Just like we are now listening to the pain that many women have been quietly suffering, many black men are carrying around the unresolved pain that we have been unable to resolve in constructive manners. This has lead to many issues, that are now seemingly systematic and cyclic. Too often we’ve been told that expressing our pain by crying is soft but tears are often an expression of one's inner soul. Sometimes those tears come in moments of happiness and sometimes those tears come in moments of sorrow. I am strong enough to share that I too shed tears in moments of pain. In fact, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, I shed a few tears last week when “45” remarked that a few specific countries were, “shitholes.” The comments moved me and I was hurting for my friends from those countries and I expressed my emotions which is cool according to my definition of masculinity. Expressing emotions is key to a robust human experience and expressing humanity is embracing true masculinity. How can we become more tolerant and understanding of our differences? How can we redefine black masculinity in order for us to join our sisters and heal together coming out of this women's movement?

What Can We Do To Change?

A few months ago, I was featured on The Big Fella Podcast and we had a roundtable discussion on Black Masculinity (give the full podcast a listen here). During the recording, I spoke of the Scripture where Jesus asked a man with a withered hand to stretch out his hand. Scripture doesn't tell us that Jesus specified which hand and so we know this man had a choice. He could have stretched out his good hand or his withered hand. The man chose to extend his withered hand so that he could be healed. We are all dealing with pain and for too long we've extended the strong hand and kept the withered hand covered from sight. We need to go against the current of this culture and be strong enough to extend our withered masculine hands in order to achieve the healing that we so desperately need.

Expressing ourselves to a therapist, a close friend, a family member, or a mentor will provide us with a safe space to express our range of emotions. Black masculinity doesn't need to come at the expense of another gender, race, and/or sexual orientation. When we do the work to free us to express a range of emotions - to people that we trust - then we are freeing ourselves to be our most authentic selves. In this authenticity, we unclog years of oppression and see that there is room to express masculinity in a healthy way while also allowing for others to express their authentic truths as well. We've heard from our women and while their movement is front and center we need to be doing the work to redefine black masculinity and rid ourselves of toxins. In doing this we can develop even stronger bonds within our neighborhoods, listen and hear our women's pain, build tolerance for those who are different from us, and unify us to ultimately develop stronger leaders for the future. Afterall, we're going to need strong leaders in the coming years.

Listen to the podcast and leave your comments on black masculinity below!

Soulful Silverback x Big Fella Podcast