Jacqueline A. Hinds MA (HRD) CEIC MCEP

I want to share this post & say something a/b it if I may. This is correct based on what I wrote. It amazes me how reviews of The Man-Not in journals & even on Amazon get that the concept of the Man-Not is about marking a space occupied by entities that do not register concern. Throughout The Man-Not I discuss these ideas as Black males being unthought. I can earnestly say that I have very little interest in debating ideas w/American academics the longer I stay outside the country b/c basic reading & the ability to disagree civilly is not part of American academic culture. Everyday people, mothers of sons, families, & Black men who were victims of abuse & violence, who read The Man-Not understand what it is. Amazon reviewers understand what it is, but in the American academy the idea promulgated by Black feminists is that any & all thinking about Black men is defined by lack & reclamation. Over the last decade only one group in the world has asserted that The Man-Not is about reclaiming patriarchal manhood. Ironically it is the same group who asserted that Black men desired patriarchal manhood & would kill to get--Black feminists. There is a sickness of the American mind that condemns Blackness for thinking itself differently. The fact that so many people outside the academy understands what the Man-Not is, while others blatantly misrepresent it, shows the depravity of Black theory, not its success. Black academic theory, in my view, lies to the Black public. It demands acquiescence to false ideas and decadent idols. It lies to valorize disproven readings and concepts. The demise of the American university system is not only political it is ideological & structural.

This is why it is incumbent for Black Male Studies to engage the historical as well as the sociological. Anything else is just ineffective theorization--or making s**t up.