Thread by @tillwefree

Here is a primer on #BlackMaleStudies (BMS), what it means, key scholars, key terms, and major points. Anti-black misandry is so prevalent in the response to BMS so I'm going to take the time to be very clear about what it is (1/19)🧵

“Black male studies is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to exploring the various developmental trajectories and the vulnerabilities (racial, sexual, economic) of Black men and boys in the United States and abroad.” (2/19)

Although @DrTJC is BMS most prominent scholar, it has been around for awhile. Richard Majors, 1992’s ‘Cool Pose’ is seen as a marker of the beginning of BMS for some, but Black men have been studied by Black men far longer than that(3/19)

A few notable names in the field to get you started (starting with more current advocates): @LordHasan , @DrTJC , @RenyTure , Anthony J. Lemelle, Jr., Clyde Franklin, Error Miller, William A. Smith (4/19)

For bonus points your can read the work of Sylvia Wynter and Frantz Fanon. Not BMS scholars but very influential (5/19)

Some key concepts are genre, phallicism, misandric aggression, social dominance theory, social mobility, racialized men, anti-black misandry (6/19)

BMS addresses masculinity as well, but not every masculinity study is from BMS (7/19)

A key position includes the use of genre as opposed to gender, which is influenced by the work of Sylvia Wynter (8/19)

Since gender is “composed based on the European concept of man and woman”, Wynter coined ‘genre’ to analyze the experience of black people who existed as another"mode of being human",which were, natives/animals and not men under European paradigms. Genre is a type of thing (9/19)

@DrTJC expounds on Sylvia Wynters concept of ‘genre’ to analyze the existence of racialized men, who are forced to exist outside European concepts of gender, becoming a “man-not” as he describes in his book (10/19)

BMS is interdisciplinary, so while every scholar may not always use 'genre' to describe the experiences of black men, the underlying idea behind the words use remains consistent throughout the field (11/19)

Black men, as outgroup racialized men, have a specific life trajectory that deserves to be studied in relation to their own experience and the unique barriers that they navigate (12/19)

BMS does this by “presenting evidence and statistical analysis as the basis of its theories” making it different from other prevailing theories on Black men, which tend to be ideological in nature (13/19)

This makes BMS an antagonist to many philosophical and theoretical fields whose conceptualizations of Black men largely rely on ideology, and don't come from Black men themselves (14/19)

The social mobility of Black men, ideological positions on Black men, Black male victimization, conceptualizations of masculinity and manhood, and Black men's well-being as a whole are a few particular interest of the field (15/19)

Black male studies ignites study around Black male victims of interpersonal violence, while also expanding into studies of racialized men, yielding new paramaters of inquiry in the experience of out-group men (16/19)

Due to BMS reliance on data to ground its theory, it doesn't have any inherent antagonist or a need to proselytize, which begs the question (17/19)

If Black male studies has been around for at least the last 20 years, and is focused on creating better realities for Black men, why is it never brought up when discussing topics like police brutality and the school to prison pipeline? (18/19)

BMS fills in the gap on the study of black men without framing black men as inherently patriarchal/hegemonic
So why is black male studies attacked on social media and ignored by major publications when discussing the issues and life trajectories of black men? (19/19)