Let Them Cry: Toxic Masculinity & Black Male Vulnerability
I remember my first encounter with toxic masculinity long before I knew what it was, what it meant, or why it was a crippling factor in the Black community. I was roughly eight or nine years old spending a one of those stick to your skin type heat summer afternoons with my cousins in Jersey. Profusely sweating from an aggressive game of ‘keep away’ that was only intended for taunting and isolating the youngest of the bunch, i.e., myself. With the excitement of the game building and my stamina rising, I had pushed one of my male cousins with a little too much energy, resulting in him falling on concrete; which created a nasty abrasion that started to bleed. When he started to cry (one’s natural reaction) he ran to his dad who looked him up and down and said “Why you crying? Suck it up.” With that an invisible switch was flipped in my cousin’s brain. He was rubbing the tears from his eyes and not two minutes later the game was back on. I remember this incident vividly because of the immense guilt I felt at making someone cry; and my uncle’s reaction to my cousin’s pain, but more so tears. It didn’t shock me at such a young age because it was a commonality often heard in conversations from man to another man when it came to emotions: “suck it up”, “toughen up”, “be a man”. Or the adult more version that includes a bit more profanity: “don’t be a bitch” or “don’t be a pussy”. But looking back I can’t help but think about what would’ve happened if my cousin cried. If instead of being told to “suck it up” he was asked if he was ‘ok’. I wonder what harm would’ve come to my uncle if in that moment rather than ignoring his son’s feelings, he comforted him. Hugged him, or showed him a bit of affectionate love. In the Black male community, this is a common that many young boys and men can probably relate to; receiving what is labeled ‘tough love’ rather than regular love. The kind of love that teaches young Black boys to bottle their emotions, suppress their feelings, and remain stoic to the face of vulnerability. Vulnerability is not acknowledged as it should be in the Black male community; and while hypermasculinity runs rampant, young Black boys are crying in solitude if at all because they are afraid of what others might think if they saw that they too, feel things just as deeply as the rest of us. While I can argue that yes, these teachings perpetuate toxic masculinity in young Black men, I try not to abash the Black father by critiquing the taught idea that the toxic masculinity is required to be a Black man in America. What this means is some Black fathers, mine included, raised their sons to disregard that vulnerability due to their presence in white America and allowed the toxins of unhealthy qualities within toxic and hyper masculinity to seep in as a means of protecting them. By adapting the patriarchal way of dominance, Black men were building a barrier between them and white Americas intolerance. I use an excerpt from Unharm Our Sons: Black Father, Masculinity, and Mental Health in explaining my thinking of the masculine façade in the face of white America.
“Historically, Black men have opted into toxic masculinity to preserve their sanity, and to protect and provide for their families. Beginning with slavery, America’s sociopolitical structures and institutions have upheld a racially stratified, patriarchal class system that, to varying degrees, has oppressed everyone except wealthy white men. This reality, coupled with a desperation to escape racialized poverty, left Black men with no other choice but to attempt assimilating into the dominant culture.” (Aryah Baker)
In opting into the necessary evil, toxic masculinity has been a characteristic in the Black male hegemony out of necessity, taking up the white patriarchal stance on power and domination to protect himself in the face of American oppression. This was prominent for Black men to do during the era of segregation. To be the ‘manly man’ who “brought home the bacon” to his subservient, aka the Black woman. But in postmodernism I can’t see this to still be a politic way of raising young Black men. One reason I quarrel with toxicity in maleness as a means of survival is how it has effects on others beside the Black male; primarily on the Black female. By taking on this patriarchal stance, Black men have abetted in establishing sexism in the Black community. By the male asserting his dominance to rectify his feelings of weakness in white America he expresses this sovereignty over the Black female. Engaging in the well-known ideology of the meek, or lesser than Black women. I use a quote from Bell Hooks in Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics where she argues about the unjust treatment of Black women at the hands of toxic masculinity.
“Feeling as though they are constantly on edge, their lives always in jeopardy, many Black men truly cannot understand that this condition of “powerlessness” does not negate their capacity to assert power over Black females in a way that is dominating and oppressive; nor does it justify and condone sexist behavior.”
Toxic masculinity is undoubtedly a learned quality of human behavior. And although I am not at liberty to criticize Black fathers for teaching it to their sons, the focus of my essay is to try to understand it’s prevalence in the Black community, and why it’s taught. To understand, it’s best to go back to periods of peak racial injustice in America and how this has affected the livelihood of Black men. Through America’s racially biased lense, Black men have historically been depicted as dangerous, aggressive, and violent by nature. The result of this has been fear of the Black male and the attempted subjugation under oppressive structures due to this phantasmal fear. This fear is the dangerous pedagogy of racism. Creating and cycling the idea that Black men should be feared becomes the motive behind unjust killings of Black men at the hands of police, or the reasoning behind the ridiculously overcrowded prison industrial system. And this isn’t going unnoticed by Black men, so they teach their sons, and their sons teach their sons and toxic masculinity is learned repeatedly through lineages of Black men.
“Black men continue to inherit and pass down a legacy of trauma stemming from generations of hypermasculine gender socialization, “the process through which children learn about the social expectations, attitudes and behaviors typically associated with boys and girls.” (Aryah Baker)
I recall a conversation my father had with my brother about rules he would have to abide by that his friends wouldn’t because he was a Black boy and some of them weren’t. He couldn’t have been older than eleven. Black men teach their descendants about the ways the white America will see them. And how to protect themselves through means of tough love and an unhealthy relationship with masculinity. Teaching boys, that in a world that looks at them like grown men capable of bad, there is no room for vulnerability. But the truth of the matter is, “Black men in America are in fact deeply fragile and constantly at risk.” (Rose Hackman) In the case of my cousin, my uncle took what he probably believed were the necessary steps to stop his son for showing vulnerability in a moment that I would consider a totally acceptable moment to show such passion. “Black males have literally been socialized to avoid feelings of vulnerability.” (Brandon Jones) Vulnerability — something to be feared, a feeling to be shunned and buried, repressed. This can be the dangerous case in the Black male community when hypermasculinty is taught as a positive. That the “mans-man” is the ideal figure to strive towards if you’re a young Black boy. This has been ingrained so deeply in the mentality of young men, that vulnerability is no longer acceptable, regardless of race or external factors. I was a camp counselor for serval years and our primary clientele at this camp were kids ages twelve to seventeen both male and female. I can recount on several occasions when a group of boys would play together and things got to rough, some kid would occasionally (only occasionally, I was a good camp counselor) get hurt and his friends would tell him, “don’t be a bitch” rather than asking if their injured friend was ok. While our female campers on the other hand would crowd, the injured victim consoling them, trying to make them feel better. Why is it that vulnerability is almost a natural trait in women but not in men? Why are most women fine with showing vulnerability whereas men are taught from a young age that it’s unacceptable? Often, in the Black community young males at an early age are placed in external factors like school, platonic relationships, and broader societal structures and are expected to be tough and unyielding in terms of their masculinity. In Fredrick Salyers essay 4:44 Sends an Important Message About Masculinity they write about the Black males fear in confronting their vulnerability.
“Often, when Black men dare to express their innermost feelings, they are forced to confront the dangerous paradigm of hypermasculinity. For them, being perceived as soft or feminine is a gamble. Although the wager may yield tremendous personal growth, Black men navigate internal conflict in attempts to preserve social expectations, outward perception, and personal safety.”
These problems aren’t new and sudden but are deeply intergraded into how we raise our Black men in the community. Effecting, or for better words obscuring their perception on vulnerability, weakness, and strength. The Black male’s problems with masculinity aren’t just damning to the persona of the Black man, but they are taking a massive toll on their mental health as well. While on the surface it may seem fine to tell a man to “stop bitching” or to “toughen up”, what you’re really doing is invalidating their feelings and emotions; denying them their humanly right to feel sentiment. Being a Black man in America is not easy feat. You are constantly being put to the test of acceptability in spaces both white and Black, forced to deal with the trauma of racism and prejudice, and sometimes loss because of it. So then on top of it all — to be told to repress the feelings that may come from your trauma for the sake of upholding the hollow shell of toxic masculinity. This is how mental health problems arise. If this still isn’t setting in, let’s explore it further through a theory I like to call The Kanye Effect. As explained by Brandon Jones in A Kanye Place: Black Male Vulnerability and Mental Health the mental stability of the Black male is tempered with by external factors that can build to devastating consequences.
“Like many Black males, Kanye has experienced several traumatic events in his life, including a near-death experience at a young age and the unexpected death of his mother. Compound that with being a Black man in spaces that do not offer equal treatment and opportunities, and it is no wonder that he has reached this point of a breakdown — or what he has relabeled as a “breakthrough.” Black men endure so much stress that it is not a far reach to see someone like Kanye in this state of vulnerability — a state in which we may see his thoughts, emotions and behaviors as extremely bizarre, offensive and outlandish. Black males have limited constructive outlets for our emotional toll. Therefore, when Black men hit a point of breakdown it can lead to dangerous results.”
Whether Kanye has hit his breaking point or breakthrough will differ on who you ask, but the correlation between Black men and welded up emotion of toxicity leading to harmful and on the occasion dangerous results. The Kanye Effect takes the Black male, throws the hardships of life at him, but gives him nowhere to place that vulnerability because he must constantly be vigilant of how much emotion he can let out or share with others. It also results in displacement. Where can the anger, frustration, guilt, and sadness be placed, if not in the world due to fear of societal rejection. While many believe that Kanye has chosen to put his feelings into his art, this is not the case for all, or even many Black men in America. They are left repressing their honest feelings they should have been validated into expressing at a young age. As young Black males grow up learning that their vulnerability is a crutch to be feared, they are at risk of developing slow growing mental health problems that can come back to haunt and hurt them later. There has been a substantial rise in suicide in young Black males over the past decade; young Black boys are understandably under a lot of pressure put on them by both internal and external factors to fit the mold of the strong man who can’t chance showing any vulnerability. Or else this illusion would be shattered. To cope with the realization of the illusion some have sought suicide as the answer. Hypermasculinity isn’t a trait that leads to a strong man, but one who staggers drunkenly because of emotional repression. “Like toxic masculinity, hypermasculinity demands men prove their manhood by dissociating from their inner emotional lives and vulnerability.” (Aryah Baker) Black boys are crippling under the weight of false hypermasculine appearance and taking their lives because of it. They don’t know how to address their feelings they are constantly being told to repress and its ruining relationships, or lives. Including their own. When a person lacks emotional sympathy and empathy they are stuck in a void of unrecognizable feelings towards others; creating hostile environments when asked to be vulnerable or ‘open up’ in their daily relationships. It’s important that this changes because if it is learned, it can be unlearned. By teaching Black boys about emotional vulnerability their improving their mental health and their emotional intelligence especially with others. By learning how to accept and understand one’s own feelings, empathy towards others will come more naturally to them. Emotional intelligence is also a productive mechanism to have in the face of suicide or depression. It aids in coping with the strenuous tasks of being Black in white America. It’s well past time that Black boys and Black men unlearn these unhealthy methods of survival. Make them understand the dangers of repressing the emotions that are valid. They are valid. Their experiences should not be overlooked or ignored because trauma of any kind can leave lasting damage on a person’s mental health and growth. Teach Black boys and men that vulnerability is necessary in the development in a fully functioning adult and assists in emotional intelligence and stability. Allow Black men to be vulnerable spaces they share with you without making them feel weak or lesser than the ‘ideal’ Black man. Take the stigma away from mental health in the Black community and don’t be afraid to recommend some clinics for mental health to our young Black men. In Bell Hooks Novel Yearning, she describes how critiquing the Black community doesn’t make one anti-Black if it is done so in a way that can further the development of said community. Make no misunderstanding I’m not here to blame Black fathers or criticize Black men who aren’t comfortable opening up; my only intentions were to inform those on how most of us are failing the Black community by denying Black boys and men their rights to basic human experience: emotion & vulnerability. So, the next time your Black son, nephew, grandfather, uncle, brother, father, or cousin start to unconsciously become vulnerable with you, don’t stop them. Encourage them. Let those Black boys cry.
