We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity

We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity by bell hooks is a book collection of 10 essays on the way in which white culture marginalizes black males. The essays are intended to provide cultural criticism and solutions to the problems she identifies.^[1]

In We Real Cool, hooks suggests that black males are forced to repress themselves in white America. She suggests the ways in which racist and sexist attitudes developed in American culture have criminalized and dehumanized black males, and the ways in which these myths have harmed the black community. In the book hooks states that she believes that hip-hop as a whole strongly reflects imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.^[2]

Chapters

Chapter 1: Plantation patriarchy
Chapter 2: Gangsta culture: a piece of the action
Chapter 3: Schooling black males
Chapter 4: Don't make me hurt you: black male violence
Chapter 5: It's a dick thing: beyond sexual acting out
Chapter 6: From angry boys to angry men
Chapter 7: Waiting for daddy to come home: black male parenting
Chapter 8: Doing the work of love
Chapter 9: Healing the hurt
Chapter 10: The coolness of being real

See also

• Masculinity

References

Further reading

• Traps: African American Men on Gender and Sexuality by Rudolph Byrd