Race Men

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by Hazel V. Carby

Harvard University Press

Due/Published November 2000, 240 pages, paper

ISBN 0674004043

New in paper (F00)

Carby rejects the assumption that a paticular type of black male can represent the race. A critique of definitions of black masculinity at work in American culture, Race Men shows how these defining images play out socially, culturally, and politically for black and white society -- and how they exclude women altogether.

Contents

Introduction
The Souls of Black Men
The Body and Soul of Modernism
Tuning the American Soul
Body Lines and Color Lines
Playin' the Changes
Lethal Weapons and City Games
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

Review

Hazel V. Carby's bold new work examines the "male-centeredness" of black intellectual and cultural life. The idea of a "Race Man" as representative of the race has, Carby argues, created anxiety and an overriding concern with the status of African-American masculinity. In her examination of how the image of the black male is played out in the social, political and cultural stages, Carby discusses the changes in this construction and the persistent exclusion of women from the larger cultural and intellectual discourses. Carby begins her analysis with a look at Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folks. In it she reveals the narrow and rigid code of masculinity that Du Bois applied to racial achievement and advancement -- a code that remains implicitly but firmly in place today in the work of celebrated African-American intellectuals. She also looks at Paul Robeson's rejection of the traditional construction of Afro-American masuculinity as well as his image in relationship to the modernist aesthetic; the music of Leadbelly; C.L.R James's writing on cricket; and the life of Toussaint L'Ouverture. Just as Robeson's departure from America symbolized a kind of challenge or repudiation of the conventions of Black masculinity (as defined by Blacks), the work of jazz musician Miles Davis, and science-fiction writer, Samuel Delaney, also offer (in very different ways) resistance. Finally, Carby looks at the career of Danny Glover and how the Lethal Weapon movies have used the black/white male relationship as a kind of resolution of racial tensions. Needless to say, a resolution that, once again, excludes women.