ABSTRACT
In 2019, Vox reporter Jane Coaston announced that intersectionality—or the idea of mutually reinforcing systems of oppression—might be most hated word in American conservatism. Even self-identified liberals have made their contempt for feminist theory and intersectionality known in their attacks on “grievance studies”. Black male aggrievement, and antagonism between black feminism and New Black Masculinities (NBM), has been nurtured by a neoliberal academy that delegitimizes critical scholarship and takes delight in conflict between progressive movements. While NBM is new in name, it relies on an old formula: a progressive anti-racist agenda anchored in an anti-feminist, conservative gender politics—Black male aggrievement. The legal roots of “aggrievement” help emphasize how NBM advocates make a claim to injury at hands of black feminism and black women scholars. Neoliberal ideologies built on divisiveness, competition over scarce resources, and a post-race and post-feminist worldview have fed gender conservative, cis-normative and zero-sum politics of Black male aggrievement. NBM, therefore, has been seduced by neoliberal project.
