Being minus a penis, I have to speculate what it is to be a Black man in a society created to cater to their egos and feed their dysfunction. I can only suppose that because I am a woman and a feminist woman at that, because I’m such a keen social observationist, and because I can recognize the failure of the “system” to raise emotionally mature Black men, that my analysis of Black men’s challenges will probably not be reflective of what most Black men think, feel or believe are their challenges. That being said, I think, as a Black woman, I must acknowledge the struggles that Black men face that keep them, in far too many instances, from self actualization and wholeness, which is probably not the objective of more than a handful of Black men anyway.
I can’t say that these are in order of importance but they are the ones I feel I can best articulate, or at least try to articulate.
1. An inability to communicate emotions. Being socialized to suppress emotions, feelings, and not being taught how to communicate other than aggression, I would imagine that a great many black men feel silenced when they feel frustration, disappointment, sorrow, longing, loneliness and a host of other emotions because they can’t even identify what they are feeling, let alone how to express it constructively. I suspect it’s why so many black men create phonetic, hieroglyphic, ebonic ways to communicate because without an emotional outlet, they must feel like a mute person trying to speak a foreign language. Because, however, you can’t articulate a problem you don’t know you have, a great many men must feel angst and frustration and be unable to pinpoint why or most fail to even acknowledge the sensation as a problem. As human beings, the need to be understood, to release your emotions is there but the socialization of our men is such that they equate sex with release.
2. Living up to the Mandingo Myth. I would almost guess that most Black men don’t think that this is a challenge, they think it’s some sort of rite of passage or it’s the natural order of the universe. Unfortunately, the Mandingo myth is a creation of the white man and living up to his expectations is dysfunctional at best, and harmful at its most effective juncture. Far too many Black men have bought into the myth, believing that they are sex gods whose sole purpose in life is to spread their seed. Society reinforces that Black men are superior athletes with big dicks and doesn’t leave them room to be anything else. It creates a sense of inferiority in Black men who don’t have a twelve inch dick and who can’t slam dunk and it paralyzes those who are packing and ballin’ to believe that they are capable of nothing more.
3. Being as good as the white man. The white man is all powerful. Anything he says or does is beyond reproach. He can commit crime and get a slap on the wrist. He can be a total idiot loser and have inherited money and affluence pave the way for him in life. He makes the most money, he has the most power, he has the most influence, and he get’s the most beautiful women. For a Black man to look in the mirror and see himself as a man and not have the same autonomy as white men must be terribly crippling. To add insult to injury, the measure of manhood is SUPPOSED to be dick size and sexual skill and to have that and NOT be able to navigate life with the ease of a white man must create an ache inside the likes of which I will never know. The constant struggle to prove that you are as good as a white man must consume all too much time and energy. The fact that there’s virtually nothing a Black man can say or do to give him equal footing to the white man in society, to know that he will always be seen as inferior to the white man regardless of his accomplishments has to be frustrating.
4. No viable role models of Black manhood. With so many women in this, “I don’t need a man to raise my son,” kick, the inability of those women to foster and nurture responsibility in their sons, and the entire social structure being catered to tell men that they can do no wrong, that women are the creators of sin, you have generations upon generations of Black men that haven’t been raised to be good Black men, they’ve been raised to be males. Being a man is far more than pissing standing up. Manhood is having integrity, fulfilling your responsibilities, being honest when you realize that it’s not the easy way out, and being able to release patriarchal roles and treat people like human beings and equals, not as objects to manipulate. We don’t have Black role models to teach men how to be good fathers and husbands. We don’t have Black role models to teach men how to have integrity and pursue excellence above all else. Without these role models, we are replicating empty, shallow, superficial models of manhood that are based on sexuality and aggression and not what a man is truly supposed to be.
If I were to repeat the rhetoric of the chest-thumping masses of Black men, their biggest challenges would be not being able to find a good black woman, too many gold-digging Black women, women not being supportive, being pulled over by the police unjustly, and not being able to be the head of the household like a man should be. Those are the empty frustrations of men seeking validation for their dysfunction. The biggest challenge of us as black people is to get Black men to see that their perspective is flawed and that their penis doesn’t give them the right to come and go as they please without respect or regard for anyone else other than their own selfish desires.
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