The Crunk Feminist Collection

GENDER: @#$% THE PATRIARCHY

Introduction

The essays in this section confront the numerous and varied ways patriarchy and gender norms marginalize women, girls, trans folk, and all things feminine. While patriarchy ultimately harms everyone, cisgender men and boys are rarely forced to reckon with the ways their lives, experiences, and concerns are valued at the expense of others. Our formal education does not teach us what is at stake for folk who are gender fluid, gender nonconforming, gender neutral, or same-gender loving. As crunk feminist Eesha Pandit has noted, Sex and gender are different and there are more genders than two, but in a patriarchal culture that privileges masculinity and maleness, binary categorization reinforces the hegemonic harms linked to the social construction of gender and the hegemonic harassment that insists masculinity be given social capital.

Just as gender is not synonymous with sex, it is not preoccupied with femininity. We approach gender as a contrived system designed to dictate how women and men (including trans and intersex folk) negotiate their roles and performances, in public and private. Many of us found feminism after recognizing and/or resisting the blatantly sexist and misogynist cultural expectations of how we were supposed to think, act, dress, and behave. The strict confines of gender scripts failed to represent the hybrid, fluid, androgynous spectrum of gender expression we experienced and witnessed in our lives. Gender was invented to restrict the performance of women and men to conservative and traditional behaviors, punishing nuances such as female masculinity or androgynous femme.

These limitations of gender are particularly problematic in Black communities because of the residue of Moynihan’s matriarchy thesis,¹ the nuanced negotiation of gender in Black households, and the vulnerability of Black masculinity due to limited resources and opportunities linked to racism. Even though our social circumstances, allegiances to Black men, and devotion to Black churches have often complicated our relationship to raced gender performance, Black women can rarely afford to hold conservative or traditional attitudes about gender, which were designed with White women in mind. Because Black women are framed by images of independence, strength, and resilience, their gender performance, unlike White women’s, has often been read as an assault on Black manhood and evidence that Black women are inherently more masculine and, therefore, don’t deserve or require the same protection and provision as White women. Thus, Black feminism recognizes and calls out the racist agenda of gender categorization, particularly the ways it polices the bodies and actions of Black women.

Our work seeks to further complicate the already problematic relationship Black women have to the patriarchy, a relationship that is both abusive and one-sided. While we understand the myriad ways Black men are targeted for their own negotiation of gender, we refuse to prioritize the needs of men over women or to overlook the investments all men have in patriarchy because of their inherent privileges. We understand gender to be a social construction created to limit our options and access.

As crunk feminists we embrace the possibilities of gender performance, insisting that Black women and women of color be given the room and agency to make sense of who we are, outside of stereotypes. As women of color, we are intimately aware of the politics of identity, the role of racism in the ways our gender is read and understood, and the interconnection of our race, gender, sex, ability, sexuality, and class. Our allegiance to Black men—we are allied—is not an investment in patriarchy, because our feminism pushes us to challenge the status quo and demand equal standards.

We envision an understanding of gender that is inclusive and nonhierarchal; we imagine relationships that are reciprocal and not violent. We are also invested in the lives and experiences of our community and siblings, including all sexes and genders, and we are deeply invested in and committed to shifting our language practices and social justice commitments to be more gender inclusive.

Black women and girls are not generally offered the luxury of femininity. Women of color are faced with more than sexism in our homes, jobs, and communities. We face criticism when we express our independence from and solidarity with men, and receive backlash when we express our disappointment and frustration with their flagrant disregard for our lives and well-being. Many of us grew up witnessing our foremothers and other women in our lives demonstrate strength and independence out of necessity, never given the luxury or opportunity to be kept women. Places we were told to revere like churches and schools, as well as intimate spaces like our homes and bedrooms, were privately, if not publicly, sexist. We were encouraged (by women and men alike) to accept these unfair and unjust practices as normal.

The absence of men was never an absence of possibility. We were raised to be feminists (what our mamas called having our own, outside of a man), to get educated, to be capable of achieving our goals, to understand the function and functionality of female friendships, especially in households that were largely matriarchal. Still, the absence of men was never an absence of male reverence. Patriarchal influences permeated our lives and we, like Black feminists before us, had to learn and understand that our allegiance is to ourselves and that we cannot afford to be invested in patriarchal norms.

Feminism, which ultimately seeks equal rights and recognition for women and girls, and crunk feminism, which unapologetically and actively resists patriarchy by practicing, being, and performing crunkness, inform the impetus of this section. As crunk feminists, we are not invested in being polite, respectable, or politically digestible—because our very lives are on the line.

Women and girls are perpetually reminded that their lives are not valued, that their testimonies (against men) will not be believed, and that their well-being is unimportant when masculinity (including ego) and patriarchy are at stake. This was reinforced, for example, when the Black women assaulted by former police officer Daniel Holtzclaw said they felt that reporting him would be futile, and when the more than fifty women who have come forward as rape victims of Bill Cosby are framed as accusers, not victims. It is also reiterated through the documented double standard of the wage gap and the fact that Black women and trans women of color are disproportionately affected by violence that ends in death.

Patriarchy is invested in the normalization of masculinity in all of its manifestations (including rape culture and violence) and the silence and invisibility of women, especially women of color. The patriarchy tells us that women should stay in their place and not challenge authority. The patriarchy wants us to be misguided and misinformed. The patriarchy wants us to be defeated and disenchanted. Our essays on gender demonstrate resistance and refusal to comply with traditional, irrational, and patriarchal bullshit. Fuck the patriarchy!

1. The controversial Moynihan Report, written in 1965, concluded that the high rate of Black families headed by single mothers would greatly hinder the progress of Black communities toward economic and political equality.

Dear Patriarchy

Crunkista

Dear Patriarchy,

This isn’t working. We both know that it hasn’t been working for a very long time.

It’s not you . . . No, actually, it is you. This is an unhealthy, dysfunctional, abusive relationship—because of you. You are stifling, controlling, oppressive, and you have never had my best interests at heart. You have tricked me into believing that things are the way they are because they have to be, that they have always been that way, that there are no alternatives, and that they will never change.

Anytime I question you or your ways, you find another way to silence me and coerce me back into submission. I can’t do this anymore. I’ve changed and in spite of your shackles, I’ve grown. I have realized that this whole restrictive system is your own fabrication and that the only one gaining anything from it is you. You selfish dick.

I will not continue to live like this. I will not continue to settle. I know now that there is a better way.

Before you hear about it from one of your boys, you should know that I have met someone. Her name is Feminism. She is the best thing that has ever happened to me. She validates and respects my opinions. She always has my best interests at heart. She thinks I am beautiful and loves me just the way I am. She has helped me find my voice and makes me happier than I have ever been. We have made each other stronger. Best of all, we encourage and challenge each other to grow. And the sex . . . Well, the sex is so much hotter.

I’m leaving you. You’re an asshole. We can never be friends. Don’t call me. Ever.

Never again,

Crunkista

On Black Men Showing Up for Black Women at the Scene of the Crime

Brittney C. Cooper

In 2013 I showed up to the Brecht Forum in Brooklyn ready to have a conversation about what we mean when we say ally, privilege, and comrade.

I showed up to have that discussion after months of battle testing around those issues in my own crew. Over the years, I’ve learned that it is far easier to be just to the people we don’t know than the people we do know.

So there I sat on a panel with a White woman and a Black man. As a Black feminist, I never quite know how political discussions will go down with either of these groups. Still, I’m a fierce lover of Black people and a fierce defender of women.

The brother shared his thoughts about the need to liberate all Black people. It sounded good. But since we were there to talk about allyship, I needed to know more about his gender analysis, even as I kept it real about how I’ve been feeling lately about how much brothers don’t show up for Black women, without us asking, and prodding, and vigilantly managing the entire process.

In a word, I was tired.

I shared that. Because surely a conversation about how to be better allies to each other is a safe space.

This brother was not having it. He did not want to be challenged, did not plan to have to go deep, to interrogate his own shit. Freedom talk should’ve been enough for me.

But I’m grown. And I know better. So I asked for more.

I got cut off, yelled at, screamed on. The moderator tried gently to intervene, to ask the brother to let me speak, to wait his turn. To model allyship. To listen. But to no avail. The brother kept on screaming about his commitment to women, about all he had done for us, about how I wasn’t going to erase his contributions.

Then he raised his over-six-foot-tall, large, Brown body out of the chair and deliberately slung a cup of water across my lap, leaving it to splash in my face, on the table, on my clothes, and on the gadgets I brought with me.

Damn. You knocked the hell out of that cup of water. Did you wish it were me? Or were you merely trying to let me know what you were capable of doing to a sister who didn’t shut her mouth and listen?

Left to sit there, splashes of water, mingling with the tears that I was too embarrassed to let run, because you know sisters don’t cry in public, imploring him to back up, to stop yelling, to stop using his body to intimidate me, while he continued to approach my chair menacingly, wondering what he was going to do next, anticipating my next move, anticipating his, being transported back to past sites of my own trauma . . .

I waited for anyone to stand up, to sense that I felt afraid, to stop him, to let him know his actions were unacceptable. Our copanelist moved her chair closer to me. It was oddly comforting.

I learned a lesson: everybody wants to have an ally, but no one wants to stand up for anybody.

Eventually three men held him back, restrained him, but not with ease. He left. I breathed. I let those tears that had been threatening fall.

Then an older Black gentleman did stand up. I will not stand for this maligning of the Black man . . . , his rant began. While waiting for him to finish, I zoned out and wondered what had happened here.

Did this really happen here? In movement space?

Tiredness descended. And humiliation. And loneliness. And weariness. And anger at being disrespected. And embarrassment for you. And concern for you and what you must be going through—to show your ass like that. And questioning myself about what I did to cause your outburst. And checking myself for victim blaming myself. And anger at myself for caring about you and what you must be going through. Especially since you couldn’t find space to care about me and what I must be going through.

Later, with my permission, you came in and apologized. Asked us to make future space for forgiveness. I didn’t feel forgiving that day. I don’t feel forgiving today. I know I will forgive you though. It’s necessary.

After being approached at the end by a Gary Dourdan–looking macktivist, who couldn’t be bothered to stand up to the brother screaming on me, but who was ready to help me heal the traumas through my body—as he put it (yes, you can laugh)—I grabbed my coat and schlepped back to Jersey.

On the long train ride home, and in the days since, I was reminded that that was not the first time I had been subject to a man in a movement space using his size and masculinity as a threat, as a way to silence my dissent. I remembered that then as now, the brothers in the room let it happen without a word on my behalf.

Why?

Is it so incredibly difficult to show up for me—for us—when we need you? Is it so hard to believe that we need you? Is solidarity only for Black men? As for the silence of the sisters in the room, I still don’t know what to make of that. Maybe they were waiting on the brothers, just like me.

I do know I am tired. And sad. And not sure how much more I want to struggle with Black men for something so basic as counting on you to show up.

The Evolution of a Down-Ass Chick

Robin M. Boylorn

Down-Ass Chick: a woman who is a lady but can hang with thugs. She will lie for you but still love you. She will die for you but cry for you. Most importantly she will kill for you like she’ll comfort you. She is a ride-or-die bitch who will do whatever it takes to be by your side. She’ll be your Bonnie if you are her Clyde.¹

I taught a class on Black masculinity that covered everything from Black man stereotypes and the patriarchal requirements of Black masculinity to big Black penis myths, homophobia, and hip hop. One of our classes on romantic relationships between heterosexual Black women and men inspired an interesting conversation that stayed for days. Forgive me for a quick (perhaps academic) summary.

Several Black women scholars (including Patricia Hill Collins and bell hooks) tell us that Black love is an act of rebellion. In a culture that claims Black women are unlovable and undesirable, and Black men are violent and irredeemable, it is considered rebellious when Black men and women love each other. Further, Black male scholars (like Mark Anthony Neal, Michael Eric Dyson, Byron Hurt, and Michael Jeffries) have discussed the ways thug (or hip hop) masculinity makes room for romantic love, and how patriarchy (and hip hop) promotes a binary perception of women as either good or bad. In other words, heterosexual romantic love relationships between Black women and men are complicated. And hip hop culture situates Black women as either a ride-or-die chick and/or a wifey (but not a wife) or a disposable woman, used for sex and a good time. I wasn’t feeling either one of those options.

As a self-proclaimed good girl, I have always found it problematic that good girls are punished for being good. While we may be the ones men claim to want, most of the good sisters I know are situationally single. The good girl is put in the pocket while the other woman gets the attention, affection, love, sex, and children. Alternatively, if good girls become ambivalent about this wait-and-see kind of love, and if they transform themselves into the version of themselves that men will pay attention to, they will no longer be seen as good and therefore no longer be desired. Ain’t that some shit? Patriarchy at its finest.

When I was seventeen years old, in the mid-1990s, I aspired to be a down-ass chick. I was into pseudothugs and pretty boys, or any combination of the two, and (would have) gladly compromised my dignity and self-esteem to be down.

A down-ass chick was loyal, sexual, willing to lie, die, fight, or steal for her ni**a. She kept her mouth shut and legs slightly open, but only for her dude. She was supportive and submissive, and essentially self-sacrificing. She was glamorized in music and films and always got the dude—whether he was worthy of being had or not.

At the time, the promises of the down-ass chick were intoxicating, seemingly liberating. Mind you, I was nowhere near being a feminist when I was a teenager, and like most of the other Blackgirls I knew, I was trying to get chose. But that was then. Now that I can carefully critique the role, I realize that being a down-ass chick makes it nearly impossible for a Black woman to measure up. For example, while hip hop thug masculinity acknowledges that thugs need love too, it is a particular kind of love that cannot be accomplished by one woman. A thug needs polyamorous love that can simultaneously feed his ego and his reputation. Women have to be conflicted and oxymoronic to be enuf. For example, you need to be good, but willing to participate in criminal activity; you need to have your own, but let him take care of you; you need to be virginal, but sexually talented enough to keep him satisfied; you need to be faithful to him, but willing to tolerate his infidelity; you need to be masculine enough to kick it with the fellas, but feminine enough to be sexually desirable. Being a down-ass chick was a paradoxical proposition and damn near impossible.

When we went around the classroom, quizzing each other on our down-ass-chick-ness (or desire to have a down-ass chick) I responded, Hell nah! My interpretation of a down-ass chick (the ride-or-die chick who is willing to sacrifice herself, sit idly by while being disrespected and dismissed, and tolerant of emotional and physical abuse and infidelity) is not desirable to my grown-woman sensibilities. The seventeen-year-old in me was saying yes, but the grown-ass, thirty-something feminist woman with things to lose said, Hell nah.

When I said I was NOT a down-ass chick the Black men in the room were visibly disappointed. I don’t think they saw down-ass-chick-ness as something linked to maturity, education, or knowing better therefore doing different. For them, the fact that I was cool and cute, and had been unapologetically vocal about my love and advocacy for Black men, should have made me automatically down. For me, I was too old for that shit. Grown women don’t do down-ass chick.

Over the next few days I began to imagine an evolution of the down-ass chick, since I had willfully outgrown the original version.

I decided that a grown-up version of a down-ass chick should evolve based on the types of relationships she invites into her life. As a feminist woman, my aspiration for down-ass-chick-ness involves being in partnership with someone I can build with. I see a grown-up down-ass chick as someone who is not a liability and brings something (other than just herself) to the table. But a grown-ass down-ass chick is not looking for love in all the wrong places, not sacrificing herself or her dignity for a relationship, not tolerating disrespect or infidelity, and regularly calls her partner out for their bullshit. Fuck silent complicity. I get crunk.

A grown-ass down-ass chick is loyal, has sex for her own pleasure, is a truth teller and a truth seeker, and is not interested in a man (or woman) who would require or ask her to sacrifice herself for them. She speaks her truth and her mind, sits wide legged or with her legs crossed (depending on how she feels), and owns her own sexuality confidently. She is supportive, but not submissive, and seeks a relationship that is mutually beneficial with someone who gives as good as they get. She wants to be down for a man (or woman) who wants to be down for her, who wants to dream with her, who wants to build with her. She shows up in music and films, usually as Miss Independent, and is sometimes (most of the time) single.

Being a down-ass chick isn’t bad, but it requires a reimagining of what progressive relationships look like. Being a grown-ass down-ass chick should be inclusive of nonheterosexual partnerships, resist patriarchal and hierarchal roles in relationships, and encourage independence and individuality. Being a grown-ass down-ass chick shouldn’t require you to compromise or settle or lose your self-esteem. Being a grown-ass down-ass chick should allow you to be fully yourself and fully feminist. For that, I might be down.

1. This definition comes from Urban Dictionary’s entry for down ass bitch. The term chick is often substituted for bitch in hip hop culture, mainly as a radio-edit option so songs with explicit language can be played on air.

How Did I Become a Feminist?

Eesha Pandit

Instead of fitting into a neat narrative, my feminism came in fits and starts. My feminism was inspired by teachers and friends and wonderful family, by poets and writers who spoke my own internal fears and hopes back to me, and by musicians that sang my dreams to me. So in homage to the work of the Crunk Feminist Collective, and the legacy of feminists from which we come, here are just a few snapshots of the moments I became more and more feminist. It’s not a complete list by any means, and my feminism is forged daily, but these were pivot points in my life.

1.High school, Friendswood, Texas: I skipped last-period English class to help a classmate find out where the local Planned Parenthood clinic was. She was terrified. We weren’t really even friends. We happened to be in the bathroom together and she was crying, and I had no idea what to do. Unprepared to offer anything but my research skills, I told her to meet me in the computer lab to find out whatever we could. That afternoon, she said something to me that I’ll never forget: This should be something my mom or my best friends can help me with, but I can’t even imagine talking to them about it. Ever. For the rest of my life. It would be many years before I would take my first job working in the reproductive justice movement, but that was the day that I first understood the injustice of shame and fear.

2.Sophomore year in college, in a class called Modern Philosophy: The class covered major enlightenment thinkers and, demonstrating the power of a women’s college education, my professor added a text to our syllabus called Women Philosophers of the Early Modern Period. The book included a series of letters written by sisters, aunts, friends, and lovers of the early modern philosophers we were reading in the course. In the letters, these women share ideas and help to refine the ideas of the men with whom they correspond. For example, Descartes’s The Passions of the Soul derives from his conversations with Elisabeth of Bohemia. And Leibniz wrote, My philosophical views approach somewhat closely those of the late Countess of Conway. Yet these women are not taught in most philosophy classes. I was struck, too, by the awareness that these women were wealthy, European, and White. In that moment, despite my unabashed love for the discipline of philosophy, I understood the systemic erasing of women, their thoughts, and their contributions to intellectual history.

3.Senior year of college, upon reading Toward a Feminist Theory of the State by Catharine MacKinnon: Read as part of an independent study on feminist theory, this book changed the way I think about power and the law. I carried it around for weeks reading and rereading passages. But I didn’t see myself in it—not fully, at least. There is a paragraph (maybe two) in the book in which MacKinnon refers to women of color and the divergent experiences they have. She admits that her perspective and narrative is limited, without making any serious effort to address this limitation. It was a heart-swell and a heartbreak in a matter of moments. It was then that I understood the difference between the second wave and the third wave of feminism, in a visceral way. I read bell hooks and Arundhati Roy in the weeks following, and I found a deep and resonant solace in their words and methods.

4.First summer after college, spent doing research on human rights in Cambridge, Massachusetts: In retrospect, I learned a lot about human rights and international law that summer, but it’s the poetry that stands out. Having zero dollars of discretionary income and armed with a Harvard Library card (everyone should be so lucky for at least some part of their lives), I lurked around the poetry room in Widener Library every evening and most weekends. That was the summer of Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider and Adrienne Rich’s The Dream of a Common Language. I almost cried when the latter was recalled, and I might still have my copy of Sister Outsider somewhere (shhh!).

5.Traveling to India for the 2005 International Women and Health Meeting in New Delhi: I went with colleagues to share our work on reproductive justice activism in the US. I met feminist activists from all over the world, and was moved by their persistence in the face of terrible state oppression. But it was the informal conversations with Indian feminists that are seared into my memory, conversations about advocating for reproductive rights and choices in an international context, about femicide and transnational surrogacy. I felt embraced, validated, and nourished by those women and those conversations. We talked about feminism within the South Asian community in the US and my experiences in India. We spoke in Hindi and English, alternating between the two without noticing. We shared stories of giddy victories and shattering losses, both personal and political. There I began to fully understand the power of history, legacy, and the achingly long line of feminists and freedom fighters from which I come.

Now here I find myself—with these and dozens of other transformative moments that comprise my trajectory, alongside a group of feminist friends (sisters, really) who are unrelentingly present in my life, offering constant love, support, and intellectual fuel (because feminists get tired too, y’all). Without them, I wouldn’t be nearly as comfortable in my skin and in my mind as I am today.

On we go.

Do We Need a Body Count to Count? Notes on the Serial Murders of Black Women

Aisha Durham

Number 47 looks like my second-grade teacher. Number 83 resembles one of my daughters. Number 66 calls to mind my children’s grandmother. And although some faces were cropped from near-naked bodies, others were shot outdoors, wearing boots and jackets.

—LA Times reporter Sandy Banks, commenting on photos of unidentified Black women

Debra Jackson. Click. Henrietta Wright. Click. Barbara Ware. Click. These are some names of Black women who were sexually assaulted, drugged, murdered, and dumped in LA alleys and backstreets by a former city trash collector. As news broke about a serial killer dubbed the Grim Sleeper, I found myself at the computer clicking on the still images of 180 nameless, numbered Black women and girls first published by the LA Times in 2010. I sat with each photo picturing each life—and remembering the life of my aunt who was murdered years ago.

For women who are poor, who are Black, who are substance abusers, who are single/mothers, who are sex workers, and for women who possess no Olan Mills yearbook portrait like that of Natalee Holloway, how do we make sense of their lives? Do we see them?

The national news coverage of the 1985–2007 Los Angeles murders was sensational. It created a weeklong media event where images of rape survivors, recovering addicts, missing persons, family, friends, and kinfolk served as a collective spectacle to construct a gritty drama about Lonnie Franklin Jr., the accused killer cast as the Grim Sleeper. The first LA Times web photo of an unidentified Black woman, for example, included a star rating (the star rating, three out of five, has been removed from the photo, and women who’ve confirmed their identity with the LAPD have had their photos removed from the site). The CNN online reporting resembled a movie trailer or a television crime series such as CSI.

Buried beneath the news headlines and hidden between police press releases was the actual story: the Black male serial killer. I am unsure if the public was as appalled by the dead Black women as we were fascinated by Franklin because he represented the methodical efficiency usually assigned to White male serial killers. The Franklin case prompted me to think about other news stories reporting updates or new cases about serial murderers Walter Ellis and Jason Thomas Scott, who targeted Black women and girls in Wisconsin and Maryland.

You would think the separate news stories about the systematic killing of Black women and girls in different regions would launch a national conversation about gender violence in Black communities. In the same week that a major network news station reported the LA murders, it also celebrated the number-one YouTube video called Bed Intruder. The video had been watched more than fifty-four million times by December 2010. It uses actual news footage of Antoine Dodson, a concerned brother who reports on the attempted rape of his sister Kelly. I remain dumbfounded by the complete thematic disconnect and the utter disregard for the actual loss of Black girls and women. It is as if media makers and the consuming public are unable to see Black women unless we are repackaged as entertainment.

I began thinking about writing this piece and imagined there were other stories to tell that would not sour our holiday eggnog. Then, I listened to the interview by Stephanie Jones, who created MOMS (Missing or Murdered Sisters) to raise money and national awareness about the serial murders of poor Black women in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and how she had to rent a billboard to attract local media attention. Then, after watching the morning news about another serial murderer in Kensington, Philadelphia, I could not look away. At a press conference, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter announced a $37,000 reward (from the city and police fraternal organizations) for the arrest of the Kensington Strangler, a Black man accused of killing three non-Black women. No such reward was offered in 1998 when my aunt, Mildred Darlene Durham, lay dead from gunshot wounds in the Kensington area of Norfolk, Virginia.

At the end of group sessions at an Illinois collective called SOLHOT (Saving Our Lives, Hearing Our Truths), Black feminist Ruth Nicole Brown used to invite me and other members to light incense to recall another person or to remember ourselves. We stood face-to-face so that we might see each other. One by one, we would say the names of a loved one so she/we would not be forgotten.

This essay is my virtual incense to my aunt Mildred Darlene Durham and every other Black woman whose face has been etched in my memory.

I do see you. You have not been forgotten.

You are loved. You are missed.

What Does Black Masculinity Look Like?

Robin M. Boylorn

In 2014, in the midst of discussing, debating, and dreaming about the possibility for fluidity in raced gender performance, I listened to a Black man weep and express his platonic love for his teammates (Kevin Durant’s NBA MVP acceptance speech); watched a Black man kiss a man, full lips, on live television in celebration (draft coverage of Michael Sam, the first openly gay football player drafted to the NFL, on ESPN); and relished the Pepto-Bismol-pink Cadillac a Black man gave to his mother, a breast cancer survivor, to fulfill a childhood promise (Teddy Bridgewater: A Promise to Rose, a short documentary by Spike Lee). In addition to being feel-good, rags-to-riches stories about Black male athletes, the narratives of Durant, Sam, and Bridgewater center the extraordinary escape from difficult circumstances and highlight the generosity, humanity, and possibility of Black manhood. These stories resist the stereotypic representations of Black masculinity that saturate the media and often limit Black men, especially in professional (and college) sports, as commodities and bodies. In these stories, we see Black men as sons and brothers, same-gender-loving, promise-keeping, goal-setting men who cry, tell their truths, and love their mamas.

There are three lessons that can be gleaned from these representations of Black masculinity.

LESSON #1: Black men can (only) talk about loving other men within the context of sport, brotherhood, and heterosexuality without (social and cultural) punishment.

While I enjoyed and appreciated the vulnerability and honesty with which Durant expressed himself in his acceptance speech, I couldn’t help but think about the politics of representation and how Michael Sam, a Black man who is attracted to men, could never give the same speech without critique and discomfort. As a heterosexual man, Durant has the flexibility of expressing himself and his love, appreciation, and affection for other men on his team without contempt. However, outside of that context, his words of admiration and genuine care would have been problematic. The only time a Black man can admit to loving another Black man is if it is seeped in testosterone. And while the patriarchy is detrimental to everyone equally, racism makes men of color peculiarly susceptible to mischaracterization and emasculation, so they have more to prove, more at stake when expressing love, which is seen as a weakness or vulnerability. We need an intervention.

LESSON #2: