PERSPECTIVES : A Rising Chorus...

Blame it on Rodney King, Clarence Thomas, Mike Tyson, Spike Lee, John Singleton, Tupac Shakur, Snoop Doggy Dog or even O.J. Simpson but, of late, black-male lives have been of increasing interest to the mainstream culture.

A few decades ago, singer Gil Scott-Heron proclaimed that “the revolution will not be televised.” But this revolution of the formerly invisible black man has been more than televised. It has been filmed, painted, written and rapped about.

All this attention has made the public more aware than ever that it is nearly impossible for a black man to catch a cab after twilight, that there are more young black men in prison than in college, that it is common for a black man to be randomly stopped and questioned by police--and then, too often, verbally abused or beaten up.

The latest medium for exploring black-male reality is the recent outpouring of memoirs. Books such as “Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member” by Sanyika Shakur, “Makes Me Wanna Holler” by Nathan McCall, “Parallel Time” by Brent Staples, “Fatheralong” by John Edgar Wideman, and a host of other nonfiction works by black-male authors are being written (and selling) at mind-boggling speeds.

But does this surge of new writing accurately depict black-male life, whatever that may be? Are these statements of vulnerability or sad attempts to reclaim and cash in on an age-old victim status? And why, of all times, are these works appearing now, with such urgency?

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Nathan McCall’s “Makes Me Wanna Holler” (Random House, 1994) opens with McCall and his fellas beating an unsuspecting white man whose only apparent misdeed was taking a wrong turn on his bicycle. McCall, a self-proclaimed thief and rapist who spent three years in prison but eventually became a Washington Post staff writer, remembers the abuse as a release for his past racial angers and tensions.

These were the thoughts circling his brain with each blow he dealt the young white man: “THIS is for all the times you followed me around in stores . . . And THIS is for the times you treated me like a nigger . . . And THIS is for G.P.--General Principle--just ‘cause you white.”

Sanyika Shakur, a.k.a. Kody Scott and better known by the street name “Monster,” writes in his autobiography, “I have pushed people violently out of this existence and have fathered three children. . . . I have shot numerous people and have been shot seven times myself. I have been in gunfights in South Central and knife fights in Folsom State Prison. Today, I languish at the bottom of one of the strictest maximum security prisons in this country.”

After reading these passages, one would be wise to give thanks, without regret or fear of being accused of prejudice, for not having the deadly misfortune of meeting up with the likes of Shakur or young McCall.

But as valid as these depictions may be, they certainly do not represent the lives led by most black men. The distance between the cliche of the violent, angry black man and the examples given in these books is not that great. If the authors’ goal is a re-evaluation of the stereotypes, they are sorely misguided to think that pimping personal pathology is the way to achieve it.

These books place black men--individually and collectively--in the singular, one-dimensional role of victim. Though there is an admirable element of confession to these works, it is vulnerability without vision. Readers are left with the misconception that black men must first walk though the flames of public and private destruction before reaching a place of healing, growth and individual strength.

While much of the passion and urgency of these works comes from nerves being rubbed raw by white society, to a large degree these books are also a rebuttal to recent decades’ wealth of literature by black women in which black men were sometimes cast as villains.

For African Americans of both genders, the written word has long been both a means of artistic expression and a tool in the liberation struggle. In the classic slave narrative, the chief objective was to break down oppression by illuminating it, by breaking the silence. The oppressors in these stories were always white--more often than not, white men.

Energized by the feminist movement, black women writers such as Ntozake Shange, Gloria Naylor, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker exposed black men as another force in the subjugation of black women.

Though these books gained a wide readership and received critical acclaim, black men generally responded to them with outrage. It was as if black women had somehow betrayed them by joining forces with the institutionalized system of white domination that seeks to emasculate them.

In this context, it is understandable why black men would attempt to explain the emotional--and sometimes social--conditions under which they have no choice but to exist. Acknowledging that one is an oppressor (in any form) is a recognition of power, which undermines one’s victim status and opens one up to being held accountable for one’s actions.

Though the reality of racism is undeniable, not everything that occurs in black men’s lives is the fault of that racism. People make their own personal choices and must deal with the consequences of these choices.

We must make an effort to move our dialogues beyond the blame and the rage we feel toward white society. If not, then white society will remain a central part of our lives; we will yield to the continuing false notions of our powerlessness.

As black people, we must be both selfish and instrumental in our collective healing process.

Just as the critics of black womanist literature cautioned that it was unfair to portray only images of hateful, deceitful black men who beat their women, abandon their children, remain jobless and smoke crack, the critics of this new genre of black male literature should caution readers that for all these embittered black men there are many more who are progressive, productive and actively involved in the battle to end their oppression.

Unlike their literary counterparts, these men understand that owning up to their fear and pain, discarding homophobia, and respecting the humanity and equality of black women does not mean that they will be viewed as anything less than who they already know they are: strong black men.

If only their stories could be told as well.

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“The warriors we need to step forward now aren’t the confrontational kind, but healers. . . . If black-male leadership doesn’t move in the direction of recognizing the pain and trauma beneath rage . . . if we don’t exercise our capacity to love and heal each other by digging deep into our mutual woundedness, then what we’re struggling for is merely the end of white supremacy--and not the salvaging of its victims.” --”Flyboy in the Buttermilk” by Greg Tate