ABSTRACT
Read any article or book on black masculinity and it will convey the message that black men are violent. The authors may or may not agree that black male violence is justified, or a response to being victimized by racism but they do agree that black men as a group are out of control, wild, uncivilized, natural-born predators. Prior to the black power movement of the sixties, black men worked overtime to counter racist sexist stereotypes that represented them as beasts, monsters, demons. Indeed, many of the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century racist sexist stereotypes attributed to black males are traits that are today considered to be the mark of psychopaths. One of those traits was a lack of emotional responsiveness. It has been described as a missing conscience.
