Harry Brod

White men challenging racism : 35 personal stories

White Men Challenging Racism is a collection of first-person narratives chronicling the compelling experiences of thirty-five white men whose efforts to combat racism and fight for social justice are central to their lives. Based on interviews conducted by Cooper Thompson, Emmett Schaefer, and Harry Brod, these engaging oral histories tell the stories of the men’s antiracist work. While these men discuss their accomplishments with pride, they also talk about their mistakes and regrets, their shortcomings and strategic blunders. A foreword by James W. Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me , provides historical context, describing antiracist efforts undertaken by white men in America during past centuries. Ranging in age from twenty-six to eighty-six, the men whose stories are presented here include some of the elder statesmen of antiracism work as well as members of the newest generation of activists. They come from across the United States—from Denver, Nashville, and San Jose; rural North Carolina, Detroit, and Seattle. Some are straight; some are gay. A few—such as historian Herbert Aptheker, singer/songwriter Si Kahn, Stetson Kennedy (a Klan infiltrator in the 1940s), and Richard Lapchick (active in organizing the sports community against apartheid)—are relatively well known; most are not. Among them are academics, ministers, police officers, firefighters, teachers, journalists, union leaders, and full-time community organizers. They work with Latinos and African-, Asian-, and Native-Americans. Many ground their work in spiritual commitments. Their inspiring personal narratives—whether about researching right-wing groups, organizing Central American immigrants, or serving as pastor of an interracial congregation—connect these men with one another and with their allies in the fight against racism in the United States. All authors’ royalties go directly to fund antiracist work. To read excerpts from the book, please visit http://www.whitemenchallengingracism.com/

The Construction of the Construction of Masculinities

I believe this is a propitious moment in which to undertake a theoretically oriented look back at what I shall call the construction of the construction of masculinities. Were this a research anthology on history rather than literature, I would have a more readily understandable rather than potentially mystifying vocabulary available to me to make the point I am trying to make in putting it this way. I would then say that I shall be talking about the historiography rather than the history of the construction of masculinities, intending thereby to signify that I shall be discussing not the history of masculinities, but the history of the history of masculinities, that is to say, the history of how we have written about and conceptualized masculinities. So here I shall be talking not about the construction of masculinities per se, but rather about how we have constructed our discourses about the constructions of masculinities. To further restrict my subject matter, I should say that I shall be looking at theorizations of masculinities in the English-speaking world, primarily in the United States, within a field that originally called itself ‘men’s studies,’ but then also came to be called ‘masculinity studies,’ and more recently ‘critical studies of men and masculinities.’ There are significant reasons for the shift in nomenclature, some of which I shall address later, but I shall not here be concerned to privilege one term over the other, but rather to talk about the field, regardless of how one designates it.

They're Bi Shepherds, Not Gay Cowboys: The Misframing of Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain is routinely discussed as being about “gay” cowboys, but its characters are clearly shown to be bisexual. The misframing of the film results from our cultures ongoing tendency to polarize, dichotomize, and oversimplify issues of sexuality and sexual orientation. This tendency should be critiqued and resisted.