Twenty years ago, Professor Errol Miller of the University of the West Indies popularized the notion that the Caribbean was ignoring a “marginalization of the black male” and that thousands of “men in crisis” needed a boost for their dwindling self-esteem lest they become even more dysfunctional. Miller’s analysis was questioned by several academics who offered good evidence that by most traditional measures – such as the proportion of female faculty members at UWI itself – the region was still, generally, a bastion of male privilege. Some also suggested that Miller’s descriptions were tendentious since they implied that men were more deserving of a country’s resources, and that current trends would be blamed on the success of better-educated women. Whatever the truth of the matter, few would disagree that any marginalization which Miller discerned, black or otherwise, has only grown in the intervening years, particularly among working class males who have suffered most from the social and financial uncertainties which accompany globalization.
Fortunately the crisis is far from unique to the Caribbean; unfortunately it may also lie beyond the control of individual governments, and continue for decades, since marginal men seem to be an unavoidable consequence of a shift to post-industrial economies which devalue customary male roles – breadwinner, social and moral authority, head of the family. Men have been slow to adapt to the new economic landscape and until they find a way to forge new roles, many are at risk of becoming almost completely irrelevant to the economic mainstream.
In the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Hannah Rosin argues that America has reached a stage at which men’s failure to adapt has become noticeable. She supplies a wealth of statistics to show, far beyond any reasonable doubt, that Americans are just as unprepared for the future as their West Indian counterparts. Consider this: “In 1970, women contributed 2 to 6 percent of the family income. Now the typical working wife brings home 42.2 percent, and four in 10 mothers – many of them single mothers – are the primary breadwinners in their families.”
In the United States, women dominate all but two of “the 15 job categories projected to grow the most in the next decade.” The two jobs which they have yet to outperform men are: janitor and computer engineer. But female success extends beyond traditional blue-collar jobs: “[W]omen are also starting to dominate middle management, and a surprising number of professional careers… [they] now hold 51.4 percent of managerial and professional jobs – up from 26.1 percent in 1980. They make up 54 percent of all accountants and hold about half of all banking and insurance jobs. About a third of America’s physicians are now women, as are 45 percent of associates in law firms – and both those percentages are rising fast.”
Rosin cites similar statistics for other countries: “Women in poor parts of India are learning English faster than men to meet the demands of new global call centres. Women own more than 40 percent of private businesses in China… [and, in 2009] Iceland elected Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, the world’s first openly lesbian head of state, who campaigned explicitly against the male elite she claimed had destroyed the nation’s banking system, and who vowed to end the ‘age of testosterone.’” These trends , Rosin argues, are evidence that “[the] postindustrial economy is indifferent to men’s size and strength. The attributes that are most valuable today –social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus – are, at a minimum, not predominantly male. In fact, the opposite may be true.”
Reports of a crisis in American masculinity also stretch back more than twenty years. In Backlash, a study of America’s responses to feminism, Susan Faludi cites a 1987 study at the University of Michigan which found that “men’s psychological well-being appears to be significantly threatened when their wives work.” The researchers even noted that “Given that previous research on changing gender roles has concentrated on women […] serious effort is needed to understand the ways changing female roles affect the lives and attitudes of men” – an observation made at almost exactly the same time that Prof Miller first voiced his own fears about the crisis among West Indian men.
Can men adapt to the new economic realities? A glimmer of hope may be found in the rise of what have been called post-racial politicians in the United States. The label describes a group of African-American or mixed-race leaders born too late for civil rights great battles of the 1960s. Having grown up in mixed neighbourhoods and integrated schools the new generation have far more fluid identities and have quietly taken their place within the highly traditional power structures. While black America has suffered one ‘crisis’ after another, these men have shown that besieged minorities can succeed in one of the most competitive areas of American life.
President Obama is the most famous example of this phenomenon, but he is certainly not unique. Harold Ford (Tennessee Congressman), Cory Booker (Mayor of Newark), Deval Patrick (Massachusetts’ first black Governor) are other well-known members of the so-called Joshua generation. Admittedly, they represent only a tiny fraction of the overall picture, but all of them have exploded stereotypes about what black Americans are capable of achieving. If they can succeed, why can’t others?
