Study Guide 2 and 3 - Darrius Hills PDF

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Study Guide #2 for PHIL 220 “Black Women’s Literature” Black feminist criticism uses central “politics” of black women’s lives (how they live, thrive, and survive in material world) as a constructive source of knowledge. Black feminist criticism themes include: ● Unctuousness→ doing necessary things to get ahead in life. ○ Too much work regrettably prevents time to socialize. ○ Having 1-2 jobs to support family and/or personal circumstances. ○ May endure racial/sexist/socialistic prejudice. ● Respectability politics→ presenting one’s self in professional attire. ○ Black people who bleach their skin think it increases their work status. ○ Elegant women must conceal themselves to disallow catcalling from men. ○ Speak with proper vernacular during job interview. ○ Good vs. bad hair styles/facial hair styles. ● Self-defense→ uphold one’s own integrity, body, and mind. ○ Avoiding toxic relationships with partner or family to obtain self-love. ○ Women can depend on each other which prevents proneness to suicide. ○ Paying ample attention to health. “Feminist Attitudes Among Black Community” Black women and men’s responsiveness to three areas of feminism: recognize and critique gender inequality to exploit each other’s empathy (especially men); portray egalitarian gender roles or where black males accept parenting, domestic house chores, and working wife; and protesting women’s rights (equal pay, birth control/abortion, child care). ● Encouraging black males’ support for women’s right is obtained by their childhood experience around their struggling mothers. ● If a black woman works a great job or she goes to college to obtain it, then more money can accumulate to combat low-income. ● Region, education, religion, family, socioeconomics, etc. impact all three factors. Most black women are rarely defined as feminist because it’s too white or Euro-oriented. ● Racial group affinity occurs when there are black people who think race should be held more accounted for than sex (Race issues = any culture affiliated / Sex issues = mostly women). ● Black women who stay in toxic relationships since they may never come across another partner who can sympathize with their problems better. Labor force participation give black women more obligations to work harder than white women, especially if their pay is meager or parental duties can reschedule amount of workload. Family structures and race involves a black man having a more communal view than a patriarchally-struck white man. ● Black males influence child nurturement due to reluctance in repeating fatherly abandonment or influence from interactions with their own mother. ● Male dominance can compensate insecurity/powerlessness from jobless father. ● Women’s political involvement can sometimes be shadowed by male inclusion.

“Eldridge Cleaver’s Primeval Mitosis” The discovery or cosmology (universe) of gender/gender roles is expressed through race and social class. (“...images of the highest types of male and female sexual identities relizable…”) Class, society, and basic functions of men and women include: ● Omnipotent Administrator is a white male who dominates through decision-making and higher-thinking. Supermasculine Menial is a black male who forcibly produce certain labor/activity based on bruteness and strength. ○ Even though white men despised and controlled black men, white men were supposedly envious of black men’s muscular build and male phallus (Cleaver’s hypermasculinity and phallocentrism). ○ This gave white men the right to deny black men an education because self-thinking and self-acting black men could threaten white men’s mantle of power. ● Ultra Feminine is a white female who displays any trait of beauty and elegance. Amazon is a black female who displays any trait of savagery and barbarism. ○ Black and white women were both subordinate under white men, but white women had equal domain over both black men and women. ○ White women’s sexual dissatisfaction with white men prompts their coercion of black men to please them. Black women, supposedly, had more sexual/sensual attributes that white men admired. “Racial Representations of Black Bodies” Long history of taboos and stereotypes that depict black people as menaces and monsters (especially the men who were subjected as predators for white women). ● Buck→ silly and bafoonish black man who’s seen as a threat among white women. ● Coon→ Uncle Tom-like black man whose loyalty to white people is very contemporary. ● Alligator bait→ chained black children that were food for aquatic predators in Deep South. ● Pickaninny→ offensive interpretation of a black child with very dark skin and big, red lips. ● Jezebel→ long-haired, light-skinned woman who is manipulative and sexually imposing. ● Mammy→ female version of coon who’s entrusted with the care of white children. “Constructing Gender” Black masculinity/male identity is a response to social problems (poverty, gang life, incarceration, and lackful family structure) in America. Masculinity isn’t universally determined because there are multiple customs that exist within it. This will instead refer to masculinities. ● Negro/Black Problem portrays gender role maladaptation. Ex: A black community is supposedly ruined by non-existent gender hierarchy where black women deny any opened obedience to their men (Cleaver saw this lack of dominance through social and sexual means). ● Hegemonic masculinity→ concept of manhood where power and dominance is most obtained by white men. ● Identity markers among black men are navigated by multiple trends that affect personal choices such as racism and economic marginality. Influences of manhood include self-determination, resourcefulness, familism, and spirituality.

Study Guide #3 for PHIL 220 “Male Violence” Intimate partner violence can be bi-directional (Abusive and controlling behavior from man or woman): ● It occurs physically, sexually, emotionally, psychologically, socioeconomically, religiously, and culturally. It is, however, rarely found in a marriage. ● Men don’t report their assault from women because they feel it stigmatizes their masculinity. ● Black men, as well as black women, experience higher rates of IPV based on environmental trauma at home/in community. Factors include poverty, drug abuse, mental illness, childhood discipline, etc. “About Men” To know interior lives of men, a person has to sit down and talk to them about their issues and experiences. ● Men’s stake in patriarchy: ○ Women with official power, particularly in politics, can equally enforce or disallow the passings of laws and regulations. These women may not always be of a racial minority. ● Male perception of their false feminist: ○ Women are anti-men and do/say unladylike things. ○ In truth, women are just as likely to make mistakes than men. ○ Power is a corrupting force and human nature is imbalanced. ● Risks of “blueprint” for masculinity/male identity. ○ New basis for men to be compassionate and respectful—may too late to adapt policy.

“Understanding Patriarchy” Multifaceted nature of patriarchy where men and women are affected. ● Men, especially black, develop mental harm and suicide because they stress themselves too much to be on top when living in society. ● Woman are second best in the workforce. ● Solution is to make a relatable environment where there is a lack of executive control. “Frantz Fanon, Black Skins, White Masks” Man of Color and White Woman: ● Outsider status of Negro/Negro as myth. ○ Black males and females weren’t recognized as human, but as disposable bodies. ○ “Negro” was developed as a social construction for whites to acclimate themselves into control and power. ● Self-internalization of doubt driven by white supremacy. ○ Self-hate/sellout/desire of whiteness by diminishing color due to (Jean Veneuse and Martinique are prime examples): ■ Anxious acceptance for racial community/racial shame. ■ Create opportunities/powers for one’s self. ■ Navigate the realms of black affiliation and white assimilation.

Appeal to white male authority validates black manhood? ○ “man like the rest” ■ Veneuse went through the extreme of being with a white woman in order to achieve greater social status. ● Relinquish blackness/black culture as the trade off for whiteness. ○ Veneuse’s affiliation with white woman/friends must be treated lightly or he may lose credit in social status. He wanted to be an “honorary white man.” ○ Negative visibility of black men and white women results with black men being depicted as monsters. Woman of Color and White Men: ● Respectability/appeal of white manhood vs. black manhood ○ White men are more preferred by black women than black men because white men are supposedly more powerful in intelligence and money than black men. ■ Issue of colorism: lighter-skinned women who embraced their white/Euro heritage were more inclined to select white men as a partner. ● Fluidity of whiteness ○ Fanon wanted to decolonize the minds of black people from white culture in order to appeal to their natural identity. ○ Financial security/function of wealth can be used to determine race, especially in poor countries like Brazil. ○ Divinity of whiteness, even when involving God, lead to self-hate from black people. ● Black femininity in white world ○ Customary to dream salvation, or assimilation with white culture, of “magically turning white.” ●

“Thomas A. Foster, Sexual Abuse of Black Men Under American Slavery” Rape as metaphor when it extends beyond sex. ● Anti-black misandry, hatred of black men, was expanded upon from the sexual exploitation/abuse of black male slaves. ● Bi-directional components ○ Besides penetration: unwanted touching, the use of inanimate objects, and coercion. ○ Besides gender: environment struck with poverty, domestic abuse, prostitution, etc. ● Power and control is metaphor/rhetorical device. ○ During and after Reconstruction: freed blacks brought down by fear of KKK who feared that blacks could actually overturn racial barriers. Unspoken black male (sexual) vulnerability. ● Demonize black men as predators and black women as savages. ● Black boys and girls/adolescents who have trouble in school are put through disdain constructs such as counseling/drug prescriptions. Myth of common “predator” vs. prey (“rapist” vs. the raped): acts of lynching and castration on black male slaves was from being sexually preyed upon by white women.

Black male embodiment, site of desire and horror: duel perception of whites wanting/subjugating bodies but also fearing their expansion. “The Man-Not” Black male vulnerability as “erasure from theory”: ● Black men not seen as worthy subjects of study due to anti-black misandry agenda. ● Rates of sodomizing them through academic discourse ● Black man’s corpse occurs when their bodies are dead spiritually, mentally, socially, emotionally, and physically. ● Negrophobia in public domains when a non-black person feels “threatened” or “frightened” by a black person (Inflated source of white superiority). Importance of black women to racial project (uplift of black home and community/occurred from 19th Century to present): ● More black men embrace partnership over hierarchy with black women/both can understand and solve same type of problems. ○ Black men work hard in order to succeed and black women work hard and raise kids in order to succeed. ○ Enlighten black boys and girls to see and enact positive attributes from coordinate parent(s). ○ Liberative stability of keeping black family/community/relationship together. ○ Complementarianism (egalitarianism) of sexes can switch up gender roles in order to maintain household. ○ Protectionism problem for women/caricaturing black men Hegemonic Masculinity/reductionism of black male identity to mimic white masculinity. Mimetic theory is when the prestige and power of white men are trying to be replicated by black men. Double bind standards of race and gender: ● Black Tax, burden of paying by overworking to get financially ahead. ● Black women must pronounce themselves more often. Genocidal logics (tech)/mass murder of reasoning: ● Power/ego to be valid in the eyes of other people. ○ Chris. Columbus raided any rebellious Native American that was in the way of his plans for colonization. ● Technologies of death ○ Weaponized tools that destroy a type of community. ■ Police can use guns against black people who look suspicious to them. ● If one believes a group of people have no humanity, then it renders the safety of those very people....