Masculinity and Race
Historically, masculinity in the United States has been constructed as being White Protestant Anglo-Saxon, furthermore heterosexual and in charge of all matters, and this definition sets standards against which other men are measured an evaluated. Michael Kimmel provides a good definition:
[…], Young, married, white, urban heterosexual, Protestant father of college education, fully employed, of good complexion, weight and height and a recent record in sports(271).
This definition refers to a so-called „hegemonic masculinity“ because it describes a man of power, in power and with power(272).
Racially and ethnically other men have always been equated with characteristics that symbolically effeminate and disempower them. Those other men are African Americans and Asian Americans as well as Latinos and Native Americans, which are not my concern in this essay. I want to argue that race and masculinity cannot be regarded as distinct matters but are closely linked and intertwined with each other because the hegemonic masculinity by definition is only valid for Caucasians and also constructed by them. Ethnically and racially other men can never fully become masculine by that definition, they have to content themselves with the role of a marginal other. To emphasize the importance and historical significance I like to quote Dollimore:
„No consideration of cultural and/or racial difference should ever neglect the sheer negativity, evil and inferiority with which „the other“ of such differences has been associated throughout history“ (Dollimore 18) .
These Others have the opportunity approach masculinity...
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...a. Nevertheless, the period of the „Blaxploitation“ era was an exception but it was mainly due to fiscal problems in Hollywood and those characters always floated in a hyper-reality and did things that could be attributed to superheroes more than to human beings.
List of works cited:
Brod, Harry and Michael Kaufmann, ed. . Theorizing Masculinities: Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity. Michael S. Kimmel . Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications , 1994 .
Ross, J. Steven, ed. . Movies and American Society. From Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Ed Guerrero . Oxford / Malden : Blackwell Publishers , 2002
Stecopoulos, Harry and Michael Uebel, ed. . Race and the Subject of masculinities: Desire and Difference. Jonathan Dollimore . Durham and London : Duke University Press , 1997
Estes, Steve. I am a man!: race, manhood, and the civil rights movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Print.
The concept of masculinity is considered as the qualities and characteristics of a man, typical what is appropriate to a man. In this article, A Community Psychology of Men and Masculinity: Historical and Conceptual Review, The author Eric S. Mankowski and Kenneth I. Maton, analyze four main themes: "Men as gendered beings, the privilege and damage of being a masculine man, men as a privileged group, and men’s power and subjective powerlessness. The second and fourth themes are described as
All over the world Masculinity has many different cultural definitions. Depending where someone is from, and what they were brought up to believe, defines what the term “masculinity” entails. Different Social institutions all over the United States, such as the military, sports, clubs, and fraternities, have been constructing their interpretation of masculinity. One major social institution that is active in thousands of Universities across the United States is campus fraternities. Campus fraternities create their own sense of masculinity by generating certain requirements and characteristics a man must hold in order to represent them as a part of their fraternity.
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In Gail Bederman’s Manliness and Civilization, she aims to describe the concepts of manliness and masculinity at the turn of the century. Bederman explains that the concept of what it means to be a man is ever changing as a result of the ideology of the time as well as the material actions of the men. During the Progressive Era, many forces were at work that put pressure on the supremacy of white, middle class men. Some of these forces included the growing move toward empowered women, the unionization of the working class, and the move from self-employment to big, corporate business. She delves into the way that both racism and sexism were used to build up the concept of masculinity and the turn of the century discourse on civilization.
Staples, R. (1982). Black masculinity: The Black man's role in American society. San Francisco: Black Scholar Press.
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...ground or where they are located in the world, it is ignorant to put these differences up as a way to distinguish one people from another, or to say that one race has greater hierarchal significance than another. These constructions provide insight into how people have come to see one another and can also help to see ways through which avoiding racism in modern society may one day be possible.
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Abstract: The purpose of this study is to take the study of Geert Hofstede’s Masculinity index of countries and apply them to the individual states of the United States. This will apply the different cultural dimensions that Hofstede used to rank the countries. While not every criteria can be applied, similar ones will be used to create a Masculinity index for the United States.