The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

by bell hooks

The Incredible Hulk linked sexism and racism. The cool, level-headed, rational white-male scientist turned into a colored beast whenever his passions were aroused. Tormented by the knowledge of this transformation, he searches for a cure, a way to disassociate himself from the beast within. Writing about the connection between racism and the construction of masculinity in White Hero, Black Beast, Paul Hoch contends, “There is indeed a close interaction between the predominant Western conception of manhood and that of racial (and species) domination. The notion, originally from myth and fable, is that the summit of masculinity—the ‘white hero’—achieves his manhood, first and foremost, by winning victory over the ‘dark beast’ or over the barbarian beasts of other—in some sense, ‘darker’—races, nations and social castes.” Recent movies like Men in Black, Independence Day, and The Matrix rely on these racialized narratives of dark versus light to valorize patriarchal white masculinity in the realm of fantasy. In our actual lives the imperialist white-supremacist policies of our government lead to enactments of rituals of white-male violent domination of a darker universe, as in both the Gulf War and the most recent war against Iraq. By making it appear that the threatening masculinity—the rapist, the terrorist, the murderer—is really a dark other, white male patriarchs are able to deflect attention away from their own misogyny, from their violence against women and children.