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Men have got to develop some heart and some sound analysis to realize that when sisters get passionate about themselves and their direction, it does not mean that they are readying up to kick men's ass. They are readying up for honesty. --Toni Cade Bambara (1970) In the African American community, debates gender and male-female relationships have always been in the forefront of general discussions about the state of the nation and family (Bambara, 1970; Staples, 1979; Franklin & Pillow, 1982; Collins, 1987; Aldridge, 1991; Dixon, 1991; Staples and Johnson, 1993; Hill, 2002; hooks, 2004). In the late 1960's and throughout the 1970's, this discussion became especially prominent with the rise of the Power Movement and the Women's Movement causing many African Americans to question the ideas of masculinity and its affect male-female interpersonal relationships (Karenga, 2002). Authors like Alice Walker (1967), Toni Cade Bambara (1970), and Michele Wallace (1978) explored what Wallace coined the Black or generally, the idea that women had to begin to step back and allow to reclaim and put to use their long denied masculinity. Wallace's notion of the Black macho was extremely provocative in that in her analysis of male-female relationships (unlike many authors who had previously blamed conflictual relationships between and women society), Wallace implied that the blame lay with males. Wallace's Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman caused such a stir among and women that a few months following its publication, an entire issue of the Scholar was devoted to the discussion of male-female relationships, often with Wallace's concept of Macho as the starting point (Jones, 1979; Karenga, 1979; Staples, 1979). Scholars like Karenga (1979), and Staples (1979) argued that women like Michele Wallace and Ntozake Shange (1977) unfairly and unjustly hated men. Critiques of Wallace's work were typically grounded in the belief that Wallace was misguided and speaking out of personal hurt. It was also believed that her middle class status and education in a predominantly environment prevented her from truly understanding the influence of the power structure male-female relationships and therefore rendered her argument null and void (Karenga, 1979). A holdover from the Power Movement, there is often the idea in the community that gender conflict is a white thing that does not affect people and most often, it is believed that people do not adhere to typical gender because racial inequality and the enslavement process have prevented them from doing so. Steeped in this argument is the belief that during enslavement, African were not allowed to be real men and consequently African women began to take a more prominent and dominant role in the family and community (Frazier, 1939; Monyihan, 1965) (1). As a result, many people began to argue that on the institutional level, most do not have the power to force women into subordinate roles (Staples 27) and that the problems in male-female relationships were most likely due to the restraints that women put inside the home and were therefore, the woman's fault. Staples (1979) even goes so far as to argue that while sexism may be an emerging problem within the community, because of the lack of institutional power available to men, and because of low male involvement in families, cannot, as a result, be sexist (27). Staples also theorizes that it may not necessarily be women that are angry at, but their own societal condition which due to frustration, causes them to act out their aggression in ways that may directly or indirectly affect their mates and families. While the previous arguments may be accurate as far as the discussion of enslavement and its interruption of certain African cultural characteristics pertaining to gender, such as the complementary nature of interactions between African and women, the issue of the dominance of one group--men or women--is one that needs to be analyzed in its proper context. …
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