ABSTRACT
No group of men has received more attention in the late 1980s and 1990s than black men. There are many reasons for this public scrutiny. First, an increasing number of scholars, study and write on the social reality for black males. Second, men's studies and the men's movements, which have always been dominated by white males, have continually struggled publicly with how to address issues of black masculinities. Third, conservatives and neoconservatives have launched a series of ideological and political attacks on social policies and programs that were intended to help groups, such as black Americans, who are subject to discrimination. Fourth, closely connected to the conservative attacks on black Americans has been a national preoccupation with crime and the black criminal. A fifth reason for the sociological and political attention paid to black men is that being an African American male in the United States has always been a sociopolitical issue.
