The Struggles of Black Masculinity: Insights from Bell Hooks’ “We Real Cool”

Blog By: Derek Farrow Waupun Correctional Institution, Wisconsin

I’m reading a book by Bell Hooks called “We Real Cool.” Here is an excerpt from chapter two, page 26…

“Every day African American males face a culture that tells them that they can never really achieve enough money or power to set them free from racist white tyranny in the work world. Mass media schools the young in the values of patriarchal masculinity. On mass media screens today, whether television or movies, mainstream work is usually portrayed as irrelevant, money is god, and the outlaw guy who breaks the rules prevails. Contrary to the notion that black males are lured by the streets, mass media in patriarchal culture has already prepared them to seek the streets, to find their manhood in the streets, by the time they are six years old. Propaganda works best when the male mind is young and not yet schooled in the art of critical thinking.

Few studies examine the link between black male fascination with gangsta culture and early childhood consumption of unchecked television and movies that glamorize brute patriarchal maleness. A biased imperialist white-supremacist patriarchal mass media teaches young black males that the streets will be their only home. And it lets mainstream black males know that they are just an arrest away from being on the street. This media teaches young black males that the patriarchal man is a predator, that only the strong and violent survive….”

This, in my opinion, is one of the major issues black culture faces today. Bell Hooks’ “We Real Cool” is amazing, and I recommend it to all who are enlightened enough to seek out truth outside of what mainstream media drills into us.

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