Black Male Sexuality - (Excerpt)
By Ray Davis

“To be an American Negro male is also to be a kind of walking phallic symbol: which means that one pays, in one’s own personality, for the sexual insecurity of others.”

-- James Baldwin, “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy”

The Black community has paid a devastating price for Black male sexuality. Black males accepting sexual-images generated by white media systems including BET, racist legacies and economic deprivation uses sex as a way to fulfill these media fantasies, suppress their own self-hatred and closing their economic deficits with Black women by dominating them sexually rather than loving her singularly and unconditionally. Because men and fathers are the foundation of community, African American communities are frozen from evolution as our males are still defining who they are in America.

Black male sexuality maintains our men in a suspended animation of adolescence regardless of age. Adolescence run communities cannot be viable, healthy or mature and where our males go our communities go manufacturing communities that are reminiscent of the great book Lord of the Flies. Black men in their 30’s 40’s and 50’s suffer from this pathological adolescence paradigm and the results correlate to placing a fifteen year old hormone crazed boy in an environment where sex is offered to them carte blanche.  We witness an ever-increasing age gap in Black male-female relationships, perhaps a fortuitous attempt for those women to have as husbands the fathers they never had but still desperately need. Ideally, committed Black men should anchor our communities.

Our ever-increasing love deficits have proved fatal and devastating to our communities; sex without love is topical ointment for a terminal disease. We witness these cancerous behaviors in our communities and offer and accept sex as the prescription for what ails us as it temporarily numbs the pain but hastens our destruction.  As our children observe a Ferris wheel rotation of men servicing their mothers our girls see men as temporal and interchangeable suitors and our boys learn through observation that permanence and commitment to Black women is an alien concept. Our children rarely witness the blueprints for our children’s success.

As Morgan State University public radio (88.9 WEAA Baltimore) talk show host Earl El-Amin states: “We have no Black communities only Black areas.” These areas represent geographical localities that are hosted by African Americans but are not communities. Communities are environments that are not overwhelmed with advertisements for cigarettes and alcohol, communities are not infested with drugs, asbestos and lead poisoning which contribute heavily to mental retardation, and communities are not devastated with 50% drop out rates among Black students. As Black males behavior uses sex irresponsibly, the term Black community will remain an oxymoron. 

With no blueprint from positive Black males to build from, young Black males often look to the mainstream commercial market place for their rites of passage towards manhood. Bombarded with images of super rich athletes and media moguls, young Black males seek power through these images. Sex is at the center of these images and as the majority of Black males cannot realistically achieve P-Diddy’s status, they can imitate the veneer behavior of these icons with sex as their only resource damaging their communities through “fatherlessness” and leaving 70% of our women unmarried. This behavior both satisfies and repels the dominant community, as they are conscious and unconscious conspirators to the destruction of the Black community.

As America in general is still in a state of cultural immaturity by world standards, Black America is in a state of sexual psychosis. Fatherhood or the lack of it has kept our collective cultural compass spinning. With no direction to move towards, we move blindly and desperately in our sexual pursuits driven by deep human need fulfillment but constantly unfulfilled and directionless. Our woman can only be as healthy as our men, our children only as healthy as both parents. Sexuality is a necessary component of a psychologically healthy human being, if our men are sexually dysfunctional our women children and communities follow.         

Black male sexuality like so many other social and psychological tenents is and will continue to be shaped and driven by the economic liberation of Black women and men. Black women, no longer dependent on men for their economic survival, no longer have to commit to unhealthy, or abusive relationships for their survival. In addition, as birthrates decline among Black families, Black women have fewer children giving these women more freedom, various lifestyles choices and reduces social traditions like marriage and male female relationships.

These conditions will have varying effects on Black males relative to their own sexuality. Black men will have to compete economically in order to view themselves as sexually equal to the ascending Black women. This is neither an apocalyptic or Pollyanna projection. Ideally, as Black women are progressively less economically dependent on Black males, Black males will come to the table better equipped financially and educationally. As these partnerships of equal value develop, healthier relationships are possible. If we are economic beings as some cultural critics pronounce, our mental health will correlate to psychological health and our sexual behavior will mature.

The other scenario projects a dimmer view where Black males maintain massive socioeconomic deficits continuing to disappoint, his self, his women and his community. This projection presents an over abundance of hyper-aggressive males, diminished intimacy between the genders and continued shattered communities. One could argue where the Black males penis leads him is where we go as a community. Fatherhood is the antidote to Baldwin’s proclamation that the Negro in America is a walking phallic symbol; father hood is the antidote to all that ails our community. 

The writer, Ray Davis is Founder and President of The Millennium Group, a Think Tank for consciousness. For a copy of the entire article, he can be contacted at RayDavisgroup@aol.com