Black Male Racial Victimhood

When the names Rodney King, O.J. Simpson, Mike Tyson, Marion Barry and even Clarence Thomas become symbolic, like “Scottsboro,” black women are left without a way to talk about how some of the Scottsboro “boys” (accused of raping two white women) actually did commit acts of violence and murder against their girlfriends and wives. Black women are left without a way to address Rodney King as anything other than a victim, even after his second arrest for domestic abuse. And we have no response to Tupac Shakur’s nameless accuser, whose lonely plea—“I did not deserve to be gang raped”—paled in comparison to Vibe magazine’s five-page cover story on Shakur as the “misunderstood” thug.

—Kristal Brent Zook ²

This essay is about the gendered construction of Black racial victimhood. The claim I want to advance is that Black men occupy a privileged victim status in antiracist discourse. This is quite apparent in the antiracist discourse about crime and in antiracist responses to domestic abuse. The project of much of antiracist discourse is to reveal the extent to which Black men are victims of “a racist criminal justice system.” Given the statistics for Black male incarceration ³ and the problems of discrimination in the criminal justice system, this project is undeniably important. Nevertheless, as a result of this focus on Black men, without a similar focus on Black women, Black men are perceived to be significantly more vulnerable, and significantly more “endangered” than Black women. ⁴ They become the quintessential example of the effects of racial subordination. Professor Kristal Zook puts the point this way:

The Endangered Black man narrative speaks to very real assaults on the material well-being of black men. But it is a part of a larger myth of racial authenticity that has been so successfully cultivated in ghetto-centric culture, a myth that renders invisible the specific contours of living in female, working class, gay and lesbian black bodies. ⁵

As a consequence of this myth of racial authenticity and the currency of the endangered Black male trope, when an individual Black man is on trial for some criminal offense, the Black community sees first and foremost his status as a racial victim. ⁶ Furthermore, when the alleged crime involves violence against women, the fact that a Black female or a woman of any race may be the victim of Black male aggression is subordinate to the concern that a Black man may be the victim of a racist criminal justice system.

The purpose of this essay is to provide two concrete examples of how the privileged victim status of Black men operates in antiracist discourse. Part II presents the first: the male-centered way in which domestic abuse was conceptualized at an African American Women in the Law Conference. While the conference was organized to “de-marginalize” Black women’s experiences and identities in antiracist discourse, the workshops did not always reflect this mission. After three women in the domestic abuse workshop detailed very moving and disturbing incidents of domestic abuse, the issue was raised as to whether Black men ought to be incarcerated for this crime. Two interrelated, rhetorical questions were being asked: (1) Given the extent of racism against Black men and the fact of racism in the criminal justice system, should Black men be incarcerated for domestic abuse; and (2) Should Black women report their experiences with abuse—“report their Black men”—to the police? Some of the women in the workshop answered both questions in the negative. They reasoned that locking up Black men for domestic abuse exacerbates Black men’s “endangered” status. They argued that the physical abuse of Black women by Black men stems from Black men’s collective and individual sense of racial disempowerment. They suggested that locking up Black men does not address racial disempowerment; therefore it cannot solve domestic abuse.

These arguments—about racism in the criminal justice system, about Black men’s endangered status, about racism causing domestic abuse—though clearly not without merit, can function as political apologia for Black men: white supremacy, and not certain Black...