The "Man of Character" as Anti-Feminist Formation in Leadership Learning

• In Event: Collegiate Black Men and Leadership Learning for Liberation

Abstract

Within leadership learning, there is a rising tide of interest when it comes to developing critical skills and insights around what it means to utilize one’s leadership for social and political transformation. Frameworks such as the SALT model are useful in clarifying the principles and pillars of what socially just and transformative leadership can look like. (Puente M, Mitchell TD, Museus S, Ting MP, Chandler K., 2023) Black Male Initiatives (BMI’s) are often critiqued for the ways in which they reinforce heteronormativity, patriarchy, and cisgenderism. (Hutchings, 2021) Many of these critiques have sought to move us beyond the archetype of the Black male as an endangered species, and instead toward the Black male that is capable, responsible, and complex beyond monolith.

This paper will reveal the importance of centering gender and sexual politics in leadership programs designed to aid Black men. Through ethnographic insights, I evidence how the “men of character” construct, if not careful, can be weaponized as an anti-feminist formation. In order to do so, I draw valuable distinctions between the ‘man of character’ formation and a potential ‘man of politics’. Namely, the differences lie in one’s willingness and ability to be reflective about what it means to occupy the social and political locations of man. I turn to the context of a non-profit organization’s leadership learning program in order to reveal how the logic and assumptions that undergird the ‘man of character’ formation can obscure necessary labor that must take place in order to address the root causes of gendered and sexualized harm. I will discuss student perspectives on the absence of consent education as one example of how the ‘men of character’ construct loses its liberatory calculus. Ultimately, these findings reveal dilemmas BMI’s may face in committing to curating learning experiences for collegiate Black men while also imagining solutions.

Author

• Jacques P. Lesure, Brown University