It is undeniable that our culture’s obsession with branding cuts across race and gender, nonetheless there is something unique about how black men participate in it and that speaks to their location within the structure of racial capitalism.
Capitalism reduces individual worth to monetary value, although black men are inhibited from achieving normative masculinities rooted in work, (due to the unequal labour market) economic agency remains integral to their identities.
Black masculinity is situated at the intersection of masculine entitlement and devalued blackness, (black and male are inherently contradictory), even for black men who are never able to attain normative producer-provider masculinities, the seduction of patriarchal privilege is a powerful driver. With their masculinities at stake, many seek out alternative means to demonstrate their economic agency. Doing so enables black men to overwrite the dominant narrative of labour market exclusion.
If conventional routes to masculine worth via virtuous breadwinning are unavailable, the freedom to make money any way possible and spend it with abandon emerges as a generalisable expression of manhood. Because the black body is seen as lacking any intrinsic value, branding, commodification and consumerism ironically restores value. Expressions of capitalist success emerge as alternatives to conventional success within the labour economy.
Patriarchy is a powerful incentive for black men to remain committed to tenets of masculine worth rooted in economic value—even when their devalued participation in the labour market means they are unable to achieve dominant masculinities themselves.
Economic devaluation has made patriarchal capitalist inclusion especially appealing for black men, like winning a rigged game against all odds. But in doing so, the terms of black liberation are collapsed into patriarchal entitlement and participation in capitalism, rather than being framed as a more ambitious anti-capitalist critique.
How can we disassociate both blackness and manhood from capitalist registers of worth?
‘Black Masculinity Under Racial Capitalism’ by Jordanna Malton