Through Our Eyes: African American Men's Experiences of Race, Gender, and Violence

Introduction: "I am a Man"

Introduction “I Am a Man” THROUGH OUR EYES is a continuation of my search to understand the importance of violence in the lived experiences of African American women, men, and children. The physical, personal, and social violence that enter their lives comes from some place. My search is to identify those locations, their impacts, and the implications they hold for understanding not only how African Americans experience violence but also how they see themselves as a result of their experiences. Having examined the experiences of black women, I now cast a critical gaze on the lives of African American men. This book parallels research I did with nine African American women. The theoretical framework, findings, and conclusions of that study appear in Knowing What We Know: African American Women’s Experiences of Violence and Violation. As I did in my first book, through life history interviews I once again explore the confluences of meaning that shape the experiences of eight black men over the course of their lives. Through Our Eyes is also based on the premise that relations of power frame meaning. Those relations include race, gender, and violence that are created by historical processes where meaning is developed, contested, and changed through social interaction. I argue that a dual reference is formed for understanding what happens in black men’s interactions: Structural arrangements that place social constraints on their needs and aspirations create one reference point, whereby meaning emerges from what is done, by whom, and for what purpose; the ways in which black men interpret their own experiences create the other reference, whereby meaning arises from what they feel, think, and do as they interact within and against social conditions and practices. With these references in mind, I provide a context for understanding what happens in African American men’s lives when agency and social constraints are in conflict. Herein lays the uniqueness of this book: the men’s riveting first-person accounts present how they see themselves as they engage 1 the constant tensions, dilemmas, and contradictions created by the different meanings given to their experiences. There is a sociopolitical symmetry in the historical context that shapes both black women’s and men’s experiences in America. But the structural constraints that emerge from that history position their experiences differently : depending on a given social and cultural setting, they experience race, gender, and violence quite differently. I believe that those differences are signi ficant and must be acknowledged as well as understood in their own right. In considering the importance of how those differences are experienced, this book does not offer a comparative analysis between the experiences of black women and men. Race, gender, and violence experienced in the daily lives of African American men create their own stories. A critical part of the stories the men tell is about what happens when their reality becomes inseparable from racial and gender images, and the accompanying narratives shape what it means to be black-and-male in America. Their stories allow us to see in vivid detail how violence can become integral to that meaning. Distorted images of African American men and the myths that surround them are creations of imagination. In the cultural and social imagining of white America, black men and violence are inexplicably linked. In this context, although gender dynamics are present, most salient in black men’s particular experiences is the critical link between race and violence. Today, as in the past, African American men are ever-confronted with an imposing image—the violent-black-male. This disfiguring image is accompanied by an equally disfiguring narrative that marginalizes the value of their lives and calls into question their humanity, for they are socially and cultural positioned in our society as inferior beings. This imposing image and the accompanying narrative provide an important reference for what the men feel, think, and do as they interact within and against racial constraints that are informed by an entrenched stereotype and a deeply held myth about who they are as both individuals and collectively a group. The prominence of gender and its link to violence are by no means inconsequential to the shaping of African American men’s experiences. To the contrary, in their racialized experiences, violence becomes essential to the social and cultural construction of masculinity, of defining manhood, and of what it means to be a man in American society. All men, to some degree, are socialized into violence: that...