White Lies, Black Incarceration, and the Promise of Reading in Prison
“The curiosity that may be deemed a sign of genius in a white male child is viewed as trouble making when expressed by black boys,” observes bell hooks in Chapter 3 of her We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity.
The book’s title echoes the wonderful and precise poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, which also in its powerful concision offers a portrait of the dire consequences of toxic masculinity for Black men.
I came to this work of hooks along with The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love through an online documentary, The Feminist on Cellblock Y:
The documentary features Richie Reseda who, while incarcerated, began seminars on the patriarchy and toxic masculinity grounded in the writings of bell hooks.
hooks begins Chapter 3 with “More than any other group of men in our society black males are perceived as lacking in intellectual skills,” a claim both represented and refuted by the men who animate the documentary through personal reflections and candid filming of them investigating the texts written by hooks and then navigating prison seminars that rival and even surpass the sorts of college classrooms these men have been systematically denied.
From reading hooks, Reseda came to recognize the systemic forces—patriarchy, toxic masculinity, rape culture—that shaped him and his CONTINUE READING: White Lies, Black Incarceration, and the Promise of Reading in Prison | radical eyes for equity
