Identity and African American Men

Exploring the Content of Our Characterization

By (author) Kenneth Maurice Tyler

Publication date:

16 July 2014

Length of book:

300 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739183953

Kenneth Maurice Tyler identifies and describes the multiple identity components of young African American men using theoretical and empirical literatures from education and the social sciences. Identity and African American Men: Exploring the Content of Our Characterization provides a comprehensive, research-based account of the ideologies and mindsets of many young African American men.

The book critically discusses eight identity components that young African American men begin to negotiate during their adolescent years. These identity components include gender, sexual, racial, ethnic, cultural, socioeconomic, athletic, and academic identity. Identity and African American Men makes a unique contribution to the literature by offering a conceptual framework that identifies the multiple identity components possessed by young African American men. Such a framework expands the conversation about African American men and their behaviors by broadening the understanding of who these individuals are, the identities they possess, and how their identity-based attitudes and orientations may influence the behaviors exhibited by them.

Part 1
Chapter 1: “What’s Going On”: Rationalizing an Examination of African
American Men’s Identity
Chapter 2: “Why We Can’t Wait?” Data on the Psychological and Behavioral
Outcomes of Young African American Men
Chapter 3: “Living in America”: Identity, Context, and Young African American Men
Chapter 4: “Don’t Call me Nigger, Whitey!” Racism and the Lives of African American
Men
Chapter 5: “Invisible Man”: Invisibility and Intersectionality as theoretical
frameworks for African American male identity

Part 2
Chapter 6: “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” Identities of Young African American
Men
Chapter 7: African American Men’s Gender Identity
Chapter 8: African American Men’s Sexual Identity
Chapter 9: African American Men’s Racial Identity
Chapter 10: African American Men’s Ethnic Identity
Chapter 11: African American Men’s Cultural Identity
Chapter 12: African American Men’s Socioeconomic Identity
Chapter 13: African American Athletic Identity
Chapter 14: African American Men’s Academic Identity
Chapter 15: Additional Identity Considerations: Colorism
Chapter 16: “One Day It’ll All Make Sense”: Examining a Model of African American
Men’s Identity
Chapter 17: “Never Say You Can’t Survive”: Pragmatics and Future Considerations

Academic libraries throughout the US teem with works offering examinations, from multiple perspectives, of the lives of African American men. Tyler provides an analysis of the current state of black masculinity and of the array of social, political, and economic challenges that imperil the lives of African American men. Using the shooting death of Trayvon Martin as a starting point, this hybridized study presents statistical findings, cultural criticism, and the author's personal reflections and anecdotes to support its thesis. The author devotes chapters to the socioeconomic and psychological impact racism, in its myriad forms, has on black men, making them vulnerable to addiction, unemployment, incarceration, suicide, and murder. Tyler's aim is to publicize the complex tangle of anxieties black men must manage, owing to living within the US's racially oppressive culture. . . .[T]hose in introductory courses in African American studies, sociology, and psychology courses will benefit from the foundation the book provides. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates; general readers.