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Observations and Ruminations: Male Americana

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Observations and Ruminations: Male Americana

January 17, 2004


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by Christopher Browne
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For most people, I'll assume the title of my article didn't have any immediate clear meaning. If it weren't for the fact that I just completed a college seminar on "Race and American Cinema", it wouldn't have carried any distinct implications for me, either. But, I have recently spent a semester having one of the uglier sides of American history hammered into my cranium, sickening detail by sickening detail, by yet another politically-correct white apologist professor. But I digress. One of the concepts I learned about in this class was "Black Americana".

This curious phenomenon began in the postbellum South, where powerfully racist hatred still lingered in the minds of a defeated white upper class who regarded the newly emancipated African Americans as a threat and as the quintessential vile other. No longer able to express this sentiment with the same consistently overt violence that was once commonplace (though to be sure, incidences of mob lynchings and killings were by no means uncommon), these malicious attitudes and beliefs had to find other outlets into the popular culture. And they did, in a class of commerical product which came to be known as "Black Americana".

Black Americana took on many forms, from children's books filled with limericks about black babies being eaten by crocodiles, to statuettes of black men with grossly distorted physical features, to extreme caricatures of African Americans which reflected the prevailing stereotypes regarding blacks at that time. Toothless dirty shiftless vagrant males, and grinning overweight females were the images most commonly associated with African American people. Out of these stereotypes, certain pre-constructed "roles" emerged that a good number of people believed were the only ways in which black Americans were capable of living. Among these stereotypical roles, the following have have been preserved in Black Americana that has survived to this day as collector's items:

"Sambo":: The typically ignorant, happy-go-lucky, lazy and fairly incompetent black man. Usually portrayed in a context of abject poverty which came about as a result of his own laziness. Shown to be content with only gratification of his baser urges.

"Zip Coon": The comically inept black imitator of white culture. They were usually depicted trying to mimic the civilized, refined mannerisms of the white upper class, but always to a humorous degree of failure.

"Picaninny": The black child. Always creating situations which endanger their safety, but this was not seen as a bad thing, but rather something to be laughed at.

"Mami": The docile, subservient black female. Overweight, ignorant and asexual, she was depicted as accepting her "place" in society. Some figures say that the Aunt Jemima picture is one of few Black Americana products that remain in post-Civil Rights Era mainstream culture.

Eventually, the Civil Rights movement came and went and these caricatures of black stereotypes fell from popularity as popular attitudes towards African Americans became less hostile. Now, the few Black Americana products that remain are merely collector's items. (Note: Search E-Bay for "Black Americana". You'll find some great examples.) The nursery rhymes about black children frying in the sun, the images of black men as lazy and incompetent...have all faded into the pages of American history, comprising a shameful chapter in our nation's past.

Now, then. What does this have to do with the Men's Rights movement and the matter at hand? Well, an astute observer might notice the same trends at work in contemporary American culture. These same pejorative images appear with disturbing regularity, only now they target men and seem to be a symptom of underlying malicious popular sentiment. Violence against men is seen as not only acceptable, but funny. The average male is expected to exhibit the same level of base, prurient, ignorant, incompetent behavior that might have been expected from a pre-Civil Rights Era black American. Violence against male children is even explicitly advocated in a certain T-Shirt produced by David and Goliath, one of which features a young boy fleeing a barrage of rocks thrown at him. My, my, my. How far we have come since the days where images of picaninnies fleeing the jaws of alligators were seen as funny.

Not only this, but stereotypical roles for men as well seem to be emerging these days, just as they did for black Americans in postbellum America. These, too, appear to come as a direct result of popular acceptance of the prevailing stereotypes about men.

The abuser: You've all seen it. The battering husband. The possessive boyfriend. The drunken father. The man who can't control his temper because his unenlightened masculinity isn't reigned in by the Nirvana of the glorified feminine. If you've ever been subjected to the movie "Enough", the antagonist was a prime example of this stereotype.

The idiot: Most men are expected to fit this role. The man who can't change a diaper. The man who can't find directions. The man who just doesn't get it. Gee, we males sure have taken a slide in the past 30 years, seeing as we've basically made every significant contribution to the course history in the previous 10,000.

The dishonest patriarch: Hey, if you can't find specific incidences of the faceless scapegoat of "patriarchy", why not just make some up? In movies and TV especially, white male heads of companies or in positions of power are more often than not portrayed as corrupt, amoral, and only in their position through acts of dishonesty. If you've seen the film "Dogma", you'd get a good example of this from the board of directors for that toy company all being portrayed as evil sinners except, of course, the one female member, who is seen as innocent and pure.

The lust-filled loser: We've all seen this. The poor sappy guy who can't help but be manipulated by a woman's feminine wiles because, well, all men are slaves to their penises. Right?

The socially inept nerd: Just to cover all the bases, in case a man does display any sign of intelligence, then there's plan B where his social skills can be denigrated. Women in our culture are depicted as having it all...competence, intelligence, social skills, self-control...men on the other hand are lucky to be portrayed as having one of these virtues.

The similarities are eerie. A set of stereotypical expectations of men. The acceptance of violence against men as comical. An overall sense of hostility towards males that bubbles just below the immediately observable surface of our culture. The question now is, what will be done to combat this? We men have the tools to fight back that postbellum blacks didn't. We have the opportunity to learn from our own history to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. It is up to us to make sure that T-shirts like the ones that sport the logo, "Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them" will go the same way that Black Americana did-- exposed for the hateful propaganda that it is, and relegated to a shameful memory in our nation's past.

Christopher Browne


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Christopher Browne is a senior at Stonehill College.