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The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood

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Tommy J. Curry at The University of Edinburgh
Tommy J. Curry
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Abstract

Tommy J. Curry’s provocative book The Man-Not is a justification for Black Male Studies. He posits that we should conceptualize the Black male as a victim, oppressed by his sex. The Man-Not, therefore, is a corrective of sorts, offering a concept of Black males that could challenge the existing accounts of Black men and boys desiring the power of white men who oppress them that has been proliferated throughout academic research across disciplines. Curry argues that Black men struggle with death and suicide, as well as abuse and rape, and their genre-d existence deserves study and theorization. This book offers intellectual, historical, sociological, and psychological evidence that the analysis of patriarchy offered by mainstream feminism (including Black feminism) does not yet fully understand the role that homoeroticism, sexual violence, and vulnerability play in the deaths and lives of Black males. Curry challenges how we think of and perceive the conditions that actually affect all Black males.
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... While enslaved Black women were constructed as the parturient producers of subhuman, anti-citizen commodities to be exploited (Berry, 2017), the wombs of white women signified the origins of human man, civilization, and a moral purity to be protected (Curry, 2017). In a nation in which citizenship and personhood have been predicated on whiteness (Mills, 2014), America has used domestic terrorism (Wood, 2011), legislation (Donnor, 2018), and segregation theology (Butler, 2021) in the name of defending the purity of white womanhood from her most looming threat-libidinous Black men and boys. ...
... 315). Curry (2017) further contended that since white women birth man, they were provided power as essential figures of settler colonialism and empire building. Similarly, McRae's (2018) recent scholarship showed that "respectable white womanhood relied on the cultivation of physical, political, and social distance from Black men" (p. ...
... " While Denmark corroborated the act of (Black)phallic policing, his experience also presented a salient nuance to be addressed-the compliance of white women and girls. Patriarchy depends on the propagation of a mythological threat the Black male phallus poses to white femininity, and white women uphold this contract to secure their position of power within a racial order of white supremacy (Curry, 2017). This presents a moment of dissonance for Denmark as he bears witness to a white girl grappling with adherence to her civic responsibility to whiteness which reifies Denmark's subpersonhood in a racial fantasyland. ...
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... They suggest that challenges to the racist status quo are impolite, and even scary, because they may lead to white discomfort. The allegations also underscore racist tropes of Black men as violent and inferior [59]. Mohamed Baayd, the single Black school board member, spoke openly to the press about the racially motivated termination, and suggested that the district had advised Gadson to assimilate into the white hegemonic majority. ...
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