Creating Public Fictions: The Black Man As Producer and Consumer (Critical Essay)
By The Black Scholar
- Release Date: 2010-09-22
- Genre: Social Science
Description
Introduction ENGAGING prominent theoretical depictions of black men's struggles to access work, this article discusses how black men's inaccessibility to the American labor market jeopardizes their roles in urban poor communities. Using hip-hop masculinity as a case-in-point, the author applies the gender concept of "marginalized masculinity" to these analyses as a modern-day "public fiction" that, through its usurpation by mainstream media and advertising, offers marginalized black men a way to claim dominance within their worlds and encourages participation in America's economic system, despite its having failed them. In this way black men's relationship to American capitalism has transitioned from producer to consumer.
