I picked up the coinage "vernacular intellectual" reading the work of Mark Anthony Neal. Some of what the brother has written is simultaneously exhilerating and quite challenging. Clicking through his column Critical Noire at Black Voices, however, I'm struck by the preponderant characterizations of black men as misogynistic?
I spend the majority of my non-commercial time in my community working with and among black folks. Nary once in my interpersonal communion with a diverse socioeconomic cross-section of black folk have I encountered the cultural sensibility Dr. Neal derides throughout his columns. Matter of fact, the characterization of misogyny is about as alien to my experience of normative midwestern black male cultural and political life - as it is possible for a point of view to be.
Bearing in mind my own practical, personal experience, and, thinking about the Take Back the Music divide and conquer boondoggle being perpetrated by the Essence magazine arm of Time Warner all the while Warner Music Group partakes of massive profits from promoting the type of misogynistic Rhyming and Posing (RaP) that its magazine publishing and digital media arm(s) pretend to deride...., I'm left wondering whether this whole issue is something real within the broader black political culture, or, is it confined to NYC intellectual redefinitions of black male dysfunction, or, is it something largely made up and peddled in the fevered imaginations of global media publishing depictions and redefinitions of black males?
Does it reflect a particular sensibility which the writer or more specifically his publishers would like to assert within black cultural life and political thought? If so, why?
Posted by at April 4, 2005 03:03 PM | TrackBack