“Black men need feminism!”, is the popular recommendation for black men to acknowledge their gender orientation in the world. This call is led mainly by black women and a few black men. Three years ago, I remember making the same claim fresh out of Feminist Theory, a class at Spelman College taught by a leading black feminist, Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall. The class was enlightening on various levels. As a black man, it was beneficial for me to immerse myself in the theoretical and experiential realities of black women. This class allowed me to see the various complexities of black women in our society and in our communities. I was introduced to Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, Ida B. Wells, and many other influential back women. Unfortunately, I was only one of 2 black men from Morehouse enrolled in the course. Dr. Sheftall often lamented the lack of enrollment in her course by the young men across the street. However, I’ll save my commentary on my alma mater for another day. To be honest, had it not been for the recommendation of one of my brothers I do not think I would have enrolled in the course. He pushed me to challenge myself as he had by enrolling in the course. I am forever grateful for that push.

Fast forward, I’m not so sure anymore that black men need feminism, or at least it shouldn’t be all they have to look to. I want to interject here and state clearly that I am not a meninist, nor do I support the popular notions of a Men’s Rights Movement which is largely anachronistic, regressive, and non transformative. Nor is this a attempt to denigrate feminism or feminist theories as a discipline of study. What I do believe is that just as women must write about their experiences for the sake of other women, so too must men write about their experiences for the sake of other men. This is not to say that feminism has no fruit to bear for black men, quite the opposite in that black men’s reflection on black feminist literature provides one avenue for black men to round out their self conceptions in the world.

The problem I have run across is that the one avenue has seemingly become the ONLY road for black men to travel. The dominant literature concerning black men as a gendered group has largely come from black women. Even the black men who have written about their experiences usually employ a black feminist framework in analysis. So what we inevitably end up with is the proliferation of a one sided account of black men from a common theoretical framework. The running assumption is that when you talk about gender you’re talking about women. This is problematic simply because gender does not simply denote woman or female. The wide spectrum of gender identities and their subsequent lived experiences calls for us to interrogate our self conceptions beyond such a pervasive assumption…at least it should.

I began to wonder where is the literature by and about black men. Why have the valued sources of knowledge about black men seemingly only come from non-black men, where does one go to find black male gender theories, is that even a thing? These are important questions to ask oneself as a black man. Surely, they existed as long as gender has been studied in the U.S. Yet, I was not privy to the names of notable works or theorists. Black male gender theories by black men outside of feminist frameworks are largely absent in academic and public discourse. It made me start to reconsider where my ideological commitments have led me.

Which is why I believe that as black men we should take seriously the emerging theories of “black masculinism” and the possibility of black male gender studies. To be clear, this is a budding movement that has grown out of the attempts by people such as Dr. Tommy Curry, a philosopher at Texas A&M, with his most popular work The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood. He was interviewed in 2017 by Inside Higher Ed where he spoke about the necessity of studying black men in the academy. Alongside Curry, there is Dr. T. Hasan Johnson, an Africana scholar at Fresno State, who has created a blog that attempts to define black masculinism and highlight articles concerning black male experiences. The dearth of articles is an indicator that this endeavor is largely a personal project that is still becoming. Nonetheless, whether I agree with every argument or claim I cannot deny the importance of what they are seeking to identify.

I do not believe that black feminism and black masculinism have to be at odds. If anything, they can and should compliment each other. Feminism theorizes about the lived experience of women and for men masculinism offers the same opportunity. Black men and women, due to slavery and the ever present specter of white supremacy in the United States, represent distinct divergences from the typical functions of traditional gender notions. Black women have started the work on unpacking their gendered experiences and I believe the time is ripe for black men to engage in their own self-excavation. If black men do not seize this opportunity I am wary about the future of inter-communal relations between black men and women. All in all, as many black feminists have asserted, black men need to “do the work” and it starts in the mirror, not the world of another.