The New Black Man

Late last year, Mark Anthony Neal wrote New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity where he describes how the “strong black man” paradigm may be at the root of the challenges black men face today. Today, black men are still breaking out of the narrowly defined images of themselves including the pimp, gangsta, sexual buck, sambo/rapper, and sidekick to an all capable white counterpart. Neal talks about Black feminist manhood. He was once one of the many who criticized The Color Purple because of the way it depicted black men. But now his view has changed.

Before you jump to conclusions or to counteract the ones you already have. Neal is happily married with two daughters. Marriage and children was only part of his path. He took a class in college on the images of black women and it made him take a hard look at his views on women. He wanted to provide a world to his daughters where there voice would be heard and be valued.
He talks about the black communities reaction to the scandals involving R. Kelly and Mike Tyson. His analysis can be applied to any rap case. Instead of looking at both sides as if they are equal, we typically question the woman’s motives, such as in the case on Tyson, or ask where the child’s mother was, as in the case of Kelly. With the Duke scandal we’ve looked down on the woman for being a stripper. Neal posits that this is because of our traditional need to respect patriarchs and to not hold them responsible. For some reason, all those women supporters of Kelly don’t want to hold him responsible for peeing on little girls.

I (rich) want to give any future daughters I may have a world where there opinions are valued just as much as mine. I don’t want them to kowtow to men just because they are men but I want them to respect men and work with them because they have evaluated these men and found them to be worthy of standing beside. I think if we all do this, the first question we ask in a scandal involving a black women will begin to (rightly) be “what happened between them?”