Actor James Earl Jones once used his iconic deep voice to tell a protagonist in the cringy blackface comedy, “Soul Man,” how social standing and wealth should be coupled with accountability.
“A Harvard law graduate has great power,” Jones boomed beneath Professor Banks' piercing brown glare. “I hope that I teach my students to use that power responsibly.”
But posthumous videos show Jones may not have always used his own iconic status for good. Footage reveals Jones expressed derogatory views of Black women, labeling them "uptight," "over reactionary," and "militant," and criticizing them for supposedly "becoming more masculine." The video paints a stark contrast to the esteemed actor's public persona, and it raises critical questions about the nation's underlying misogynoir—i.e., contempt for Black women, a term coined by U.S. author Moya Baily.
Dr. Andrea S. Boyles, associate professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Tulane University, told BGX she acknowledges Jones’ influential work, but his disturbing remarks are neither unusual nor unexpected, especially in America.
“This is not an isolated series of beliefs by Black men. This is a broader societal issue that happens to be inclusive of Black men,” Boyles says. “They are part of a socialization process where society has regurgitated denigrating thoughts about Black women, and a percentage of them have absorbed that.”
Prominent sociologist Patricia Hill Collins says oppression for Black women punches down from different angles, including race, class and gender, in an all-encompassing “matrix of domination.” For us, discrimination comes in layers, and the racism doesn’t end where sexism picks up. It’s a unified bushwhacking that piles disadvantage upon disadvantage. The attack always begins with words.
Jones’ own destructive words are not exclusively his. They’re tools of racism carefully cultivated over the span of centuries. His use of the term "masculine" to define Black women is a particularly effective means of disarming Black women by re-framing our assertiveness and self-advocacy as contrary to traditional gender norms. “(Black women becoming) more masculine" is a coded tool for devaluing strength and resilience, re-defining an essential attribute as a problem rather than a virtue.
Jones’ use of the word “over reactionary” is another distinctly American tactic that treats Black women as if they don’t have genuine feelings and emotions “that are human.” The damage of this “othering” fully kicks in when Black women make the mistake of showing passion. That’s when bosses, co-workers and middle-management depicts their reaction—however warranted—as “abnormal,” unusual, inappropriate and outsized.
Every time a Black mom or dad trashes their partner in front of kids, somewhere in hell, a cackling Confederate demon gets a new banjo.
Many of us know Malcom X’s quote about the Black woman being the most ‘disrespected person in America,’ but that sentiment appeared lost on Jones, even as he narrated Malcolm X documentaries. Jones was even a supporter of Malcom X’s crusade for Black independence and equality, but his support failed to pierce the stereotypes U.S. society heaps on Black women. It didn’t matter that Jones is a native of Mississippi—a notorious haven for lynching and racial abuse—or that he was born mere years away from Emmett Till. It doesn’t even matter that his hurtful views could easily be applied to his own Black mother. American society excels at saturating Black men with contempt for Black women.
“If you live in a broad society immersed and rooted in racist and sexist tropes and ideas, it’s easy to absorb all that, even if you witnessed the (demonization) firsthand,” says Boyles. “The ideas are so overwhelming. It’s in the media and the broader culture.”
And in the media, it flourishes. Chris Brown lingered on Billboard’s top charts despite physically assaulting Rihanna in 2009 (and subsequently other partners), and he was rarely called to explain himself to his music industry peers. Four years ago, when rapper Tory Lanez shot Megan Thee Stallion in the foot, rappers Drake and 21 Savage claimed she’d faked the incident, without proof, as did DJ Akademiks.” Popular lyrics from Kanye’s “Gold Digger” to Snoop Dogg’s "Ain't No Fun (If the Homies Can't Have None)” easily show the depth of Black women’s dehumanization.
In terms of following some grand design for self-destruction, the Confederacy could not have asked for better men. Misogynoir also destroys Black relationships. In marriage and dating, if individuals aren’t ever mindful, Black woman prejudice can boil into a crescendo when the Black woman is ambitious or seen as successful. She may even be seen as a “threat.”
“All Black men do not perpetuate the misogynoir, but when you live in a society that pits one gender against another and characterizes Black women as ‘aggressors’ and as ‘an enemy,’ it carries over into everyday interaction in the Black community,” Boyles says.
Parenting a Revolution
It turns out misogynoir, misogyny—and, yes, misandry—are not just an ugly part of American society. They are society. Parent counselors say striking back against the might of an entire culture requires nothing less than a countercultural movement.
Parent coach Mujasi Jaara Bandele, who is one half of Minneapolis parent-coaching duo Black Family Blueprint, says this effort requires parents to engage in a movement akin to counter cultural movements in the 1960s and 1970s when Black society pushed back against dominant culture by explaining all the gory details behind American reality. Why do Black families possess comparatively less wealth through home ownership? Look to discriminatory lending practices in U.S. banks and government agencies and the nation’s history of redlining. Want to know why inner-city schools rot under aging infrastructure? Study up on court cases like Milliken v. Bradley, which locked impoverished students down to struggling schools and school funding to low-revenue districts. Similarly, a “counterculture movement” in a family home involves tons of explanations to supplement children’s exposure to the prejudiced world around them.
Children’s first impressions and their first connections to the values they stand on is in their home,” Bandele told BGX. “How that daughter or son sees the mother and the father and the uncles and the aunties and the grandparents interact with each other has a lot to do with the script they’re going to buy into of how men and women should be treated.”
This kind of education, sadly, is a full-time job. Parents are working against every abusive song lyric, every hateful stand-up comic routine and every hyper-masculine claim from every neighborhood meathead. If you’re wondering how this looks, it looks like pausing the occasional television show or song and discussing the history and implications behind it. You’ll probably ruin a good standup comedian’s joke by deconstructing the racism and sexism fueling it, but society’s been playing a joke on folks for centuries. Maybe it’s time to laugh a little less about some things.
Ayolande Bandele, the second half of Black Family Blueprint (and Mujasi Bandele’s spouse), advised parents to look to Black sociologists and psychologists who have already built the framework to understand and better explain the facts. She suggests Amos Wilson’s book “Developmental Psychology of the Black Child,” which specifically addresses the miseducation behind James Earl Jones’ ugly sentiments and how to prevent it from taking root in your children.
Mujasi Bandele says the counterculture push also involves being engaged in your children’s communities as much as possible, by encouraging some relationships and discouraging or counteracting others. Because with good stewardship, a healthy community can be a reinforcer for healthy opinions.
Sure, the long-winded explanations, role-modeling and policing a child's community can get tedious, but it works and is worth it.
“When their world begins to expand beyond the home, your children will begin to interact with a lot of those messages of misandry. But the anchoring force for them should be ‘this is different from what I got in my home. This is different from what I normally see in my community. There are some things in this song that are triggering, and this doesn’t jive with how I was raised, and it doesn’t make sense or feel good,’ so it creates strong sentiment,” Mujasi Bandele says.
Life is messy, however, and both Bandeles caution it can easily thwart a parent’s hard work. Consider touchy joint custody situations where both parents share time with kids, hash out alimony agreements and deal with the complications of new partners and mixed marriages. At some point in the drama there will be times when a parent expresses an opinion of the other gender that can scar a child for decades. The psychology term for this is “negative relational disclosure,” and it lurks in the wings of every divorce and rocky marriage, waiting to turn your kids’ perception of the opposite gender into a burning outhouse. Everybody does it, but when Black parents do it, we’re following a dark national agenda that gave us painful videos of Darth Vader sh*t-talking women, plus Sean Combs. Every time a Black mom or dad trashes their partner in front of kids, somewhere in hell, a cackling Confederate demon gets a new banjo.
“It absolutely changes that child’s mind about that gender,” Ayolande says. “They’ll grow up thinking ‘I’ll never be in a relationship with a woman like that,’ or ‘I’ll never be in a relationship with a man like that.’”
There will always be resentment in divorce, and the Bandeles advised not to hold back on therapy to resolve discord. A good therapist, among other things, will help parents set up safeguards against inadvertently wrecking children’s perceptions by making sure parents understand the rules of disclosure and the safety process.
In the meantime, Boyles says the nation will continue doing what it’s done for centuries, and the best resistance will always be tireless re-education of the next generation. Without it, the next generation of Black men and women will consider themselves competitors rather than partners.
“Black men and others who may not be educated on society’s racist and sexist underlying premises are in competition mode,” says Boyles. “They’re competing, or they’re furthering ideas that Black women are such an aggressor that they cannot be dealt with.”
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C. Dreams is an advocate who writes and lectures about prison and criminal justice reform, LGBTQ rights, harm reduction, and government and cultural criticism.
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