Introduction The Souls of Black Men The Body and Soul of Modernism Tuning the American Soul Body Lines and Color Lines Playin' the Changes Lethal Weapons and City Games Notes Acknowledgments Index
Race Men is a poignant, courageous book. It exposes what we too frequently take for granted: the manner in which oppressive masculinities permeate black politics and culture, closing off other ways of thinking, seeing, feeling, and creating. Hazel Carby takes us backstage, so to speak, and reveals how performances of manhood can silence other voices, reproduce patriarchy, and yet occasionally offer a glimmer of what could happen if we overturned the prison house of masculinity. -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Yo' Mama's DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America I've been wondering when some likely black feminist was going to challenge, in particular, the male-centeredness of the 'scholarship' of this recent coterie of black public intellectuals. I need to wonder no longer for in Race Men, Hazel Carby has ably begun the campaign in this meticulously argued treatise on the usually unquestioned symbiosis of masculinity and 'race' at the core of most debates in Africana Studies. May this propitious opening salvo become a flood of salubrious discourse. -- Michele Wallace, author of Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman Hazel Carby throws down the glove of gender before the wonted 'Race Man.' Her investigation of masculinity, race, and nation speaks volumes and names names--from W. E. B. Du Bois to Cornel West. Thank you, Hazel Carby! -- Nell Irvin Painter, author of Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol
Hazel V. Carby is Chair of African and African American Studies and Professor of American Studies at Yale University. She is the author of Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist and Cultures in Babylon.
[A] provocative…look at depictions of black masculinity in novels,
jazz, film and photography.
*New York Times*
While a number of African American women in the race movement have
accused their male counterparts of sexism in recent years, few have
done so as authoritatively as Hazel Carby in this groundbreaking
book. Critiquing the role of masculinity in the work of such
progressive historical figures as W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson,
Miles Davis, Leadbelly, and the biographer C.L.R. James, Carby
constructs a semiological and historical context for understanding
both the inherent ‘male centeredness’ of black race leaders in the
20th century and the ways in which such repressive methods of
thinking and acting continue to undermine the cause of black
liberation… Rather than writing a polemical tract about the
present, Carby uses history to make an implicit critique of
contemporary African American affairs… Carby’s book is a pioneering
model of…empathy and intellectual largesse. Race Men reads as a
blueprint for a new and more potent identity based politics—a bold
warning about the perils of delimiting our sense of who we are.
*Village Voice*
Carby’s voice is clear, well documented, courageous and loud… Carby
consistently challenges her reader to look at race and masculinity
in ways that are new, difficult and often dangerous to our notions
of self and of others… [She] adds a much-needed and very welcome
new dimension to our perceptions not only of Du Bois, Robeson,
James, Davis and others she specifically names, but of our notions
of race and maleness in all their aspects… Race Men is a welcome
call to intellectual arms in the battle not only for visibility and
voice for women of African descent, but analysis of and liberation
from oppressive notions of race and masculinity for women and men,
whether they recognize them as such or not.
*Women’s Review of Books*
Carby…is best known for her landmark 1987 study of African-American
women novelists, Reconstructing Womanhood. In Race Men, she turns
her attention to men without dulling her commitment to feminism.
This is a sympathetic book; Carby writes about these important men
with insight and admiration. Throughout, she explores the
difficulties each faced in defining himself within our racist
society. Again and again she shows that the process of becoming a
man has meant excluding women… This accumulation of examples from
the mainstream arenas of sports, music, and movies supports Carby’s
double point: becoming a black man remains a fraught process and
those who have done it successfully have not yet figured out how to
imagine or include positive and powerful women.
*Boston Book Review*
Hazel Carby has been at the cutting edge of African American
studies ever since her landmark 1980 essay on early black woman
writers and the blues helped many dyed-in-the-wool literary critics
see the importance of the vernacular in black culture. Race Men,
her intelligent and timely study of black public figures from W. E.
B. Du Bois to Danny Glover, is often rightly acerbic especially
when describing the machismo underpinning the work of Miles Davis,
the disturbing racial implications of the Lethal Weapon series, or
the stuffed-shirted public position of Cornel West (literally as he
prescribes a dress code for black intellectuals)… Race Men reveals
many insights in its groundbreaking investigation of the usually
unspoken symbiosis of race and masculinity, but it is only the
opening salvo in a discussion which will run and run.
*New Formations*
Carby can be both a subtle and yet strongly ideological writer, who
can use feminist theory to bring out new dimensions of even such
all-male enclaves as the world of B-bop music… Race Men is a rare
book, which looks at several different subjects—from jazz to black
political philosophy, from action films to the blues—from a
refreshingly radical perspective and brings real insight to the
study of black masculinity. Carby’s work transcends cultural
studies in this case to become an eloquent survey into how
role-playing and expectations construct everything else—race,
gender, sexuality—and how those in turn affect modern culture and
modern life.
*Asian Age*
Hazel V. Carby…offers a revealing look at the images of black
manhood and masculinity in America… The strength of Race Men lies
in Carby’s absorbing observations of various dimensions of black
masculinity manifested through such genres as music, literature,
film and photography.
*Black Issues Book Review*
Carby gives us a sharp and poignant insight into the black human
condition… [She] is as vehement in her denunciation of black male
chauvinism as she is of white racism.
*India Weekly*
Carby takes issue with the theories espoused by W. E. B. Du Bois in
his seminal work [The Souls of Black Folk]. Tracing the development
of black scholarship forward, she levels criticism at current black
thinkers such as Cornel West whom she feels lay claim to, benefit
from, and thus propagate the narrow boundaries of black scholarship
delineated by Du Bois, which defines the black public intellectual
in ways that exclude women… [Carby is] eloquently persuasive about
the dangers inherent in having fewer voices, especially those of
women, speaking for the race as a whole. She argues that Du Bois,
as the self-proclaimed father of future generations of black
intellectuals, leaves little room for departure from his rigid set
of guidelines. Indeed, throughout her book, Carby insists that the
intellectual and artistic leadership of black America should not
fall solely to the race men.
*New England Quarterly*
Race Men is a hard-hitting polemic…[and] each chapter stands alone
as a tightly wound argument.
*New Haven Advocate*
In six compelling essays, Carby…deconstructs representations of
black masculinity and racial leadership in a variety of cultural
settings, during critical periods of the 20th century… Carby is
gifted at finding new ways of reading American cultural products in
relation to race and gender in America. Highly recommended for
African-American studies, American studies, and gender/women’s
studies collections.
*Library Journal*
Race Men is a poignant, courageous book. It exposes what we too
frequently take for granted: the manner in which oppressive
masculinities permeate black politics and culture, closing off
other ways of thinking, seeing, feeling, and creating. Hazel Carby
takes us backstage, so to speak, and reveals how performances of
manhood can silence other voices, reproduce patriarchy, and yet
occasionally offer a glimmer of what could happen if we overturned
the prison house of masculinity.
*Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!:
Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America*
I’ve been wondering when some likely black feminist was going to
challenge, in particular, the male-centeredness of the
‘scholarship’ of this recent coterie of black public intellectuals.
I need to wonder no longer for in Race Men, Hazel Carby has ably
begun the campaign in this meticulously argued treatise on the
usually unquestioned symbiosis of masculinity and ‘race’ at the
core of most debates in Africana Studies. May this propitious
opening salvo become a flood of salubrious discourse.
*Michele Wallace, author of Black Macho and the Myth of the
Superwoman*
Hazel Carby throws down the glove of gender before the wonted ‘Race
Man.’ Her investigation of masculinity, race, and nation speaks
volumes and names names—from W. E. B. Du Bois to Cornel West. Thank
you, Hazel Carby!
*Nell Irvin Painter, author of Sojourner Truth: A Life, A
Symbol*
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