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Ghetto men have a reputation for being tough guys, and to untrained eyes it may seem that the problems many ghetto guys have with violence and the legal system are a result of them being textbook alpha males letting their machismo and testosterone run wild. But I think it’s actually the opposite. I think these problems actually come about not because of manhood run wild but because of lack of male instruction.

The black community has a 70% illegitimacy rate. It’s really staggering when you think about it. And I bet if you isolated the illegitimacy rates to just the ghetto, the percentage of single mother homes would be even higher. As a result, the ghetto tends to be a very matriarchal community. And most of the men you do find tend to be young. As Tariq Nasheed says in his book The Mack Within, you hardly see older men in the hood. This is because when most guys get past a certain age in the hood, they have either worked their way out, gone to jail, entered the military or died from violence or drugs. So not only do young ghetto guys lack fathers to instruct them in how to be men, but they also lack older male authority figures outside their family to look up to (most teachers are female too) in their neighborhood.

So since they don’t have men to teach them how to be a man, this creates an insecurity in their male identity and causes them to create their own hyperexaggerated ideal of what a man should be. Supermacho, obnoxious, fearless to the point of knuckleheaded, overaggressive…basically the parody of manhood we see in gangster rap. It’s overcompensation to the worst degree.

But even though they are doing their best to be supernigga, they still do things in a feminine way because feminine influences are most of what they know. Most of their role models and involved family members are women, and the few men in their lives were likely raised by only women too. And it shows in how they handle conflict: grudges are held forever, they never know how to let anything slide, they think primarily with emotion and are prone to outbursts, drama and confrontation and most importantly, they don’t know how to choose their battles. True male behavior isn’t being a drama queen, being highly prone to emotional outbursts and holding onto grudges; true male behavior is picking your battles, knowing when to fight and when to let things slide, analyzing things calmly and logically and having discipline over your moods and emotions and exercising emotional restraint. These are things that a true alpha male influence teaches you, and such influences have almost disappeared completely from the hood.

A chick in the hood can get away with all the drama queen meltdowns and public displays of emotion and confrontation because most people, guys and girls, don’t feel as threatened by a woman and are more likely to let her just yap without serious repercussions. Or at worst just argue back and never let it escalate to a physical level (although it does happen on occasion). When guys are the ones melting down and getting overly emotional and confrontational, it’s a lot scarier and it invites a much more serious retaliation, because now you have the extra ingredients of male size. more muscle and a whole lot of testosterone, which means escalation into serious, possibly fatal, violence is a real possibility. That’s why a society of men learning to manage conflict and emotions from women is a disaster waiting to happen, because what’s acceptable for a woman in this case can get a young man arrested or killed.

Sure a lot of male tendencies are going to show on the surface. These guys are young and are bursting with testosterone after all. But look at a lot of the other behaviors that are there also. Sitting on the stoop getting their hair braided by other girls. Long t-shirts that go down to the kneecaps and look like skirts. Colorful clothes. Obsession with fashion, shopping, shoes and accessorizing. Love of jewelry. Grooming obsessions that would put metrosexuals to shame. The more you think about it, the more you’ll notice and come up with your own examples.

Recommended Reading:

• Don’t let the cover of Tariq Nasheed’s The Mack Within fool you, this book drops some serious knowledge:
  
• Also of interest is his brutally frank dating advice book for women Play or Be Played: What Every Female Should Know About Men, Dating, and Relationships, which I highly recommend:
  

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