By D. Marvin Jones

Race, Sex, and Suspicion

The Myth of the Black Male

Exploring the basic conflict between the legal equality that black men possess as U.S. citizens and their social isolation stemming from white America’s perceptions of them as culturally alien, the author sets out to provoke, stimulate, and change the negative images and stereotypes that indicate a fundamental defect in the mainframe of American culture. As the author states, the purpose of this book is not to defend the black male, but to deconstruct him and to libertate him from the negative images and stereotypes that have stultified his existence. Largely through the victories of the Civil Rights movement, everyone in the United States is―formally―equal. Yet there remains a basic conflict between that legal equality and the social isolation of black men that stems from white America’s perceptions of them as, by nature, culturally alien.