Respectable Politics and Paradox in Making the Morehouse Man

" Respectable is an indispensable addition to the canon of work on Black masculinity. Incisive, provocative, and deeply researched, this study will reframe the parameters of the discussion."—William Jelani Cobb, author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress

"This important book provides an astute exploration of how Black institutions, responding to moral panics of Black male endangerment, advance limited and problematic models of Black masculinity, resulting in reactive respectability politics. This is an essential read for those interested in the work of race, class, gender, and sexuality in Black communities today."—Cathy J. Cohen, author of The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics

"A brilliant, courageous, carefully researched, sure to be controversial ethnographic study of Morehouse College's brand surrounding Black manhood, this timely portrait makes an important contribution to sociology, African American studies, women, gender and sexuality studies, and the evolving field of Black masculinities studies. It contributes as well to the scholarship on historically Black colleges, which has been paltry or lacking rigor. Analyzing our strengths and weaknesses is the best recipe for our survival and flourishing, not silence!"—Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Anna J. Cooper Professor of Women's Studies and Founding Director of the Women's Research and Resource Center, Spelman College

"I know of no other work that addresses contemporary respectability politics through the lens of higher education with such breadth: from the mundane schoolyard rituals that one might see at a prep school, to the question of how to 'deal with' gender-nonconforming students, to what to do about the problem of rape, to the question of how to promote our successful Black men and reinvigorate 'the brand.' This is a novel and necessary read."—Laurence Ralph, author of The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence

"With incisive breadth and analytical rigor, Saida Grundy unveils the motivations, mechanisms, and institutional processes that Morehouse College puts in play in order to maintain its brand by reproducing its go-to product: 'The Morehouse Man.'"—Karida L. Brown, coauthor of The Sociology of W. E. B. Du Bois: Racialized Modernity and the Global Color Line

The making of a culture of Black male respectability at Morehouse that underlines conservative notions of gender and class—by a former Spelman student who was once "Miss Morehouse."

How does it feel to be groomed as the "solution" to a national Black male "problem"? This is the guiding paradox of Respectable, an in-depth examination of graduates of Morehouse College, the nation's only historically Black college for men. While Black male collegians are often culturally fetishized for "beating the odds," the image of Black male success that Morehouse assiduously promotes and celebrates is belied by many of the realities that challenge the students on this campus. Saida Grundy offers a unique insider perspective: a graduate of Spelman college and a former "Miss Morehouse," Grundy crafts an incisive feminist and sociological account informed by her personal insights and scholarly expertise.

Respectable gathers the experiences of former students and others connected to Morehouse to illustrate the narrow, conservative vision of masculinity molded at a competitive Black institution. The thirty-two men interviewed unveil a culture that forges confining ideas of respectable Black manhood within a context of relentless peer competition and sexual violence, measured against unattainable archetypes of idealized racial leadership. Grundy underlines the high costs of making these men—the experiences of low-income students who navigate class issues at Morehouse, the widespread homophobia laced throughout the college's notions of Black male respectability, and the crushingly conformist expectations of a college that sees itself as making "good" Black men. As Morehouse's problems continue to pour out into national newsfeeds, this book contextualizes these issues not as a defect of Black masculinity, but as a critique of what happens when an institution services an imagination of what Black men should be, at the expense of more fully understanding the many ways these young people see themselves.