WE REAL COOL

[Pages:168]WE REAL COOL

WE REAL COOL

Black Men and Masculinity

bell hooks

Routledge New York and London

Published in 2004 by Routledge

29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 routledge-

Published in Great Britain by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE routledge.co.uk

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group.

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

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? 2004 by Gloria Watkins

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

hooks, bell. We real cool: Black men and masculinity/bell hooks.

p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-415-96926-3 (HB: alk. paper)--ISBN 0-415-96927-1 (pbk.:

alk. paper) 1. African American men--Social conditions. 2. African American

men--Social life and customs. 3. African American men-- Psychology. 4.

Masculinity--United States. 5. Sex role--United States. 6. United States--Race relations. I. Title.

iv

E185.86.H7417 2003 305.38'896073?dc22 2003016951

ISBN 0-203-64220-1 Master e-book ISBNISBN 0-203-67669-6 (Adobe eReader Format)

i was not meant to be alone and without you who understand

Contents

Preface about black men: don't

vii

believe the hype

Chapter 1 plantation patriarchy

1

Chapter 2 gangsta culture: a piece of the action

15

Chapter 3 schooling black males

32

Chapter 4 don't make me hurt you: black male

44

violence

Chapter 5 it's a dick thing: beyond sexual

63

acting out

Chapter 6 from, angry boys to angry men

80

Chapter 7 waiting for daddy to come home:

95

black male parenting

Chapter 8 doing the work of love

109

Chapter 9 healing the hurt

126

Chapter 10 the coolness of being real

138

Preface about black men

don't believe the hype

When women get together and talk about men, the news is almost always bad news. If the topic gets specific and the focus is on black men the news is even worse. Despite all the advances in civil rights in our nation, feminist movement, sexual liberation, when the spotlight is on black males the message is usually that they have managed to stay stuck, that as a group they have not evolved with the times. Influential black male journalist Ellis Cose does little to dispel this image of black masculinity in his recent book The Envy of the World: On Being a Black Man in America. Yet his book has received more widespread attention than any other recent work focusing on black males.

Identifying black males as "a group apart" in the preface Cose contends:

Many of us are lost in this America of the twenty-first century. We are less sure of our place in the world than our predecessors, in part because our options, our potential choices, are so much grander than theirs. So we are trapped in a paradox. We know, whether we admit it openly or not, that in many respects things are better than they have ever been for us. This is a time, after all, when an African American [male] can be secretary of state and, possibly, even president. The old barriers that blocked us at every pass have finally fallen away--or they have opened up enough to allow a few of us to get through. But although it is fully within our power, collectively

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