Hello, Jaye Bird. Here are some ideas about how Black men are in special need of the men’s movement.
The basic idea is this:
  1. Progressive people know that many Black men are faring poorly on many measures. You probably don't need to spend much time substantiating that point, but the facts are easy to come by if you want to make the case.
  2. Progressive people have the unfortunate habit of seeing only racism behind Black men's problems. This video demonstrates how a gender problem is automatically and wrongly conceived as a race problem only because the men who suffer from it are Black.
​running time 1:01
Rhode Island Public Television
​November 18, 2005
​Domestic violence policies and practices are especially harmful to Black men because both blackness and maleness are associated with over-wrought stereotypes of being dangerous and scary. This video shows how devastating those stereotypes can be against impoverished Black men.
version 1: running time 1:41
version 2: running time 10:15
Martin Cohen, Baltimore City Pubic Defender
November 7, 2013
Moreover, imposing strictly limited male gender roles operates especially hard on marginalized Black men.
  • The gender-based imperative for men to make money — or be unloved, disrespected and disposable — even in the absence of job skills and available jobs — impels men much more than women into illicit money-making activities.
  • The gender-based imperative for men to make money is therefore a primary cause of mass incarceration and all of the many problems that flow from it.
  • Allowing men fuller roles in pursuing their gentle and nurturing inclinations (as in equal parenting) — much as we are helping women activate their ambitions and competitiveness (as in equal career opportunities) — would provide them ways of earning love and respect that do not put them at risk for injury, death and prison. (In my experience as a correctional officer in the Baltimore City jail and as a Parole & Probation agent in central Baltimore, I can tell you anecdotally that many "Tough Black Guys" have hearts aching to love and be loved.)
  • Kathryn Edin, formerly of Harvard, now at Johns Hopkins, has done extensive research on low-income Black men's wish for “the full fatherhood experience.”
running time 1:13
Kathryn Edin
author of Doing The Best I Can: Fatherhood in the Inner City
It is important, of course, not to place all the onus for Black men's problems on antimale sexism alone. Black men suffer a Race+Gender dynamic. A good way to think of it is this...

Racism knocks Black men down. Sexism comes along to kick them.