The work “The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black” by Tommy Curry is one of the most interesting books I have ever read because of its engrossing content about the United States race relations. The author of this book, Curry, life was threatened multiple times by white supremacist because of the strong argument he makes about the ethnography of the black male body. The threats made to Curry escalated to the point that to pursue his research this year he had to flee from Texas to the University of Edinburgh where he was offered a fellowship. He previously stated that he did not feel safe pursuing his work in the U.S. This book is a historical analysis that defines patriarchy as a social system that in contemporary society enacts itself as a fundamental form of oppression of the black man. Curry in his work establishes how the Black man is perceived in America, “Black man as patriarchal, violent, and indifferent to the sufferings of others, as method.”[1]The anti-colonial perspective formulated the historical perception of the black man as patriarchal/violent. Curry explains that during the period of slavery the white man held the view that black man “reproduce and desire rather than resist and disown the (white) patriarchy of American empire.”[2]The end of slavery resulted in the black male and the burden that was granted as a designation to the black male life. He explains that the black male body is represented as a racialized body that is distant from “gender/man/human”[3]and inherently this results from understanding body politics as defined in social history as the justifications of social relations and the historical infrastructure of inequality. Historically, the black male has been granted a social classification and due to such designation, they have been placed in the zone of the non-being/alien/other that makes them outsiders of the domain “Black, female, and feminist.”[4]The purpose of the white supremacist is to internalize the subjectivity of the black male body and to annihilate the non-being.

Curry proceeds to explain that patriarchy as a concept is problematic because of the gender script that intrinsically contains. He emphasizes this by stating that “Inequities throughout history, and asymmetry between bodies as the problem of gender itself.”[5]Curry explains that the black man was historically “robbed of their historical vulnerability to rape, castration.”[6]The inherent vulnerability that the black man has is that because of its black body they are given the characteristic of aggressor and the violent race. Consequently, this demonstrates that the black man is susceptible and vulnerable to all injustices that materialize in American society because of the designation that has been granted to them. Thus, Curry explains that patriarchy is a consequence of the white women promotion of femininity that apprehends the masculinity that the white male is appointed since birth. According to Curry, patriarchy was developed by white women to maintain their white womanhood since they are the basis where an empire is constructed. Since the white woman births the white supremacist man it interrelates them to the sovereignty of patriarchy. Therefore, the black man has confronted exploitation in all aspects–––economical, sexual, and racial. They have been subjected by both the white women/men thus it has become a genderlization. For instance, in the nineteenth century, the white man as the sovereign of the state used the designated conditions of the black men, that they did not have ‘self-recognition/understanding,’ to justify the origin of slavery. Generally, patriarchy was the foundation of the southern white plantation were the black man (slaves) had to obey the white man (master). Curry explains this as the “basis of both government and nation.”[7]The white women and men, essentially both genders, executed power over the household thus they practiced patriarchy. Relevantly, the slaves were subjugated and socially oppressed by both genders, female and male. The white household was patriarchal and due to the categorization that they granted to the slaves as uncivilized savages they accordingly tried to civilize them.

Curry’s analysis of patriarchy is a system of oppression because the black male was designated and to this day is perceived as “Nonwhite/savage/primitive groups.”[8]Curry explains that the black male is always associated with rape and because they have been classified as savages and they are not patriarchal because they have been ruled by the white supremacist. The black male in the plantation or in the white household is like the white child because they are dominated by the white male. Essentially, the black male is perceived as the ‘rapist’ because they are in the zone of the non-being and the alien. The distinct categorizations that the black male has been granted such as the ‘rapist,’ savage, violent and uncivilized have kept them as the outcast in society. The white men action of “lynching, castration, of black man, was offered as recompense for being black and male, raced and rapist.”[9]The white man’s doings of lynching and castration to the black male is a form of payoff for granting the black male what they deserve, it is like a recompense. Curry describes patriarchy as a “system of white male domination that uses racism, capitalism, militarism, and sexual violence to subjugate the multiple others created as degradation of western man.”[10]The black man is socially censured because of his race, the white man views the black man as a body with lust to have sexual participation that is interrelated to the argument that the black man is a rapist. Consequently, the image and the way that the black man is framed has influenced their education and incarceration. The white supremacist utilizes methods such as gentrification and redlining to disassociate the black man from the white man/women. In the U.S, there is mass incarceration of the black men and the locality of the black male in the zone of the non-being is just justification for the white man. The black men are often victims of police brutality and are the targets of criminal acts because of their body. This is are the social consequence of the social oppression that the white supremacist has created for the black body. And therefore, because of the vulnerability that the black male inherently has the female utilized their femininity to accuse the black man of rape and to imprison them. Therefore, granting the black male an inherent vulnerability because of what they ontologically portray. Thus, the conditions that the white man have granted to the black male body makes them suffer because they are considered non-beings as argued by curry. And American society, the sovereign of the state do whatever they desire with the black man whether it is to send them to jail or to deprive them of attaining higher education.

[1]Tommy Curry, The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and The Dilemmas of Black Manhood (Temple: Temple University Press, 2017), 39.

[2]Ibid., 39.

[3]Ibid., 39.

[4]Ibid., 40.

[5]Ibid., 41.

[6]Ibid., 41.

[7]Ibid., 45.

[8]Ibid., 50.

[9]Ibid., 72.

[10]Ibid., 142.

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