Searching for the New Black Man: Black Masculinity and Women's Bodies

Chapter Three: “What’s Love Got to Do with It?”: James Baldwin, Cross-Racial/Sexual Bond(age)ing, and the Cult of Hegemonic Black Masculinity

99 Chapter Three “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” James Baldwin, Cross-racial/Sexual Bond(age)ing, and the Cult of hegemonic Black Masculinity according฀to฀richard฀wright’s฀NatIve SoN฀(1940)฀and฀“how฀bigger฀was฀born,”฀ the black masculine must always (and at all costs) be coded as powerful and, by implication, the feminized coded as weak and dangerous in its threat to the stability of the expression of power within the terms of ideal masculinity . This binary structure makes it necessary in Native Son for all feminized bodies and forces to be eschewed or to exist outside of the representative masculinized body. To embody feminized qualities—whether those be the sentimentalized style of Uncle Tom’s Children (1937), the tears of “banker’s daughters,” or penetration in some way by the phallus/phallic symbols—is to be emasculated. Even within what would seem to be Wright’s immutable and definitive constructions of the dichotomous, exclusionary, and exploitative systems used to construct black masculine ideality and power, there exist the seeds of its subversion. James Baldwin’s work moves beyond the prescribed limits of homosexual or bisexual versus heterosexual, feminized versus masculinized, subordinate versus dominant, and white versus black to refigure the terms and identity possibilities for black men. Baldwin questions and ultimately undermines the racially gendered terms and oppositions through which Wright produces powerful black masculinity. While Baldwin very much identified with depictions of the limitations and resulting violence of black masculine identity, power, and self-determination in the work of Richard Wright, particularly Black Boy (1945) and Native Son, he also realized the stifling, alienating, and destructive terms of its formulation. In Another Country (1960), through its main black male character, Rufus Scott, we see 100฀ ฀ JaMes฀baldwin,฀cross-racial/sexUal฀bond(age)ing Baldwin constantly reworking the terms of racially determined, heteronormative masculinity to free black men to move closer to expressing and becoming what they choose without forfeiting their masculinity to essentialist , heteronormative definitions. These oppressive definitions center on configurations of the white, heterosexual self and the inherent position of the black self as Other. Through Rufus, Baldwin offers alternative possibilities and formations of empowered black masculine identity. In this sense, Rufus Scott is a very important character within the maleauthored African American literary tradition. He is one of the first characters , especially after the success and ascendancy of Native Son, to clearly expose that constructions of black manhood based in masculine ideality are mythical in their final promises to secure racial equality and liberation for black men and communities. The myth’s power and promise become incoherent in the face of Rufus’s confusion, suffering, shame, humiliation, pain, and the “outing” of his diverse sexual identities, which lead to his suicide rather than his triumph as powerful black man.Rufus Scott’s suicide in many ways undermines and negates the terms of previous constructions of black masculine ideality, making clear its ideological contradictions and critiquing the pathological results of its practice for black men. Thus, Rufus’s very existence questions, deforms, and ultimately explodes the myth’s relevance and coherence.Yet Baldwin does not affect this critique through completely eschewing the terms of black masculine ideality and power. Indeed, he uses its ideological grounds to demonstrate the powerful, hegemonic ideality that Rufus must face, how it deforms his relationships with both men and women, and the costs (or“dues”) he must pay on the road to his destruction. Clearly, Rufus’s destruction comes through his own adherence to and use of the terms of black masculine ideality to generate power. And since he is unable to mitigate these terms, they lead directly to his death. However,Baldwin’s ability to articulate the limits of Wrightian masculinity and protest literature does not come without cost. Just as is the case with race rape in protest fiction, the subjectivities, identities, subversive transgressions , and sufferings of black women are displaced to motor black masculine power and expressivity.Thus,Baldwin’s initial successes in furthering constructions of more progressive black masculinities through Rufus come at the expense of Ida, the black female character. Both Baldwin and his male characters use Ida to turn the plot and fund the expression of his critique . Yet this cost isn’t structured within the usual terms of exclusion and JaMes฀baldwin,฀cross-racial/sexUal฀bond(age)ing฀ ฀ 101 dichotomous formations of male versus female identities.Within the course...