Youth Voice Journal

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Youth Issues.

ISSN: 2056-2969 Online Journal Platform: http://www.youthvoicejournal.com

Roses, Cracks and Concrete: Black Canadian

Males and Politics of “Marketability”
Gerry L. Small & Adrian Worrell
To cite this article: Small, G. L. & Worrell, A. (2018) “Running head: Roses, Cracks and Concrete:
Black Canadian Males and Politics of “Marketability””, Vol: 8, Youth Voice Journal, Online ISSN:
2056-2969.

To link to this article: youthvoicejournal.com/2018/02/28/gerry-l-small-adrian-worrell-2018-

running-head-roses-cracks-and-concrete-black-canadian-males-and-politics-of-marketability/

 Published Online: 28 February

2018

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Roses, Cracks and Concrete Small & Worrell

Roses, Cracks and Concrete: Black Canadian Males and

Politics of “Marketability”

Published in the Youth Voice Journal, February 2018

http://youthvoicejournal.com/
© IARS 2018
Submission date: 29/11/2017
ISSN(online): 2056 – 2969

Gerry L. Small & Adrian Worrell

Abstract

The Rose is the tale told and propagated by North American mainstream media to help produce the

image of the “marketable” Black male. It encourages society to subscribe to a conglomeration of

cultural, class and gender norms which are crucial to the reproduction of the complex oppressions that

entrench and normalise white supremacy. It does so in social institutions such as the mass media and the

school, through nationalistic pride and sensibilities, and at serious, but generally unrecognised, social

and emotional cost. My investigation of these issues, in the support of my thesis, is organised around

four major questions: What lessons in “success” do Black males receive most frequently from their

schooling? In what ways does nationality, specifically Canadianness, determine “marketability”? What

are the interpersonal, psychological and spiritual costs of being a “Rose”? And, how do we move

beyond the rose and toward concepts of masculinity that are more constructive? Though the barriers and

obstacles are many, and sometimes surprising, these interrogations permit for the healing and protection

ISSN (online): 2056 – 2969

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Roses, Cracks and Concrete Small & Worrell

of ourselves and others, and so are vital to our nourishing of the unborn and offer direction to young

black men on the path to being, and becoming, their fullest selves.

Keywords

marketability; black masculinity; social institutions; Canadianness; psychological health

Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?

Proving nature's law wrong it learned to walk without having feet.

Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air.

Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared

- Tupac Shakur

____________________________________________________________
Corresponding Authors:

Gerry L. Small’s work in the field of education is built on both a strong theoretical framework, but is
also experientially grounded. Prior to pursuing his graduate degrees, he worked primarily in
communities identified as priority neighbourhoods. The experience he had in those neighbourhoods
provided him with sites of knowledges and understandings of those communities that can be used to
provide concrete examples to the youth, thus bridging the theory and application divide.

Adrian Worrell (R.I.P): A good colleague and an even better friend who assisted in the process of a
wonderful paper with the support of a wonderful person!

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Roses, Cracks and Concrete Small & Worrell

A Dozen Roses for Sale

What about Black males makes them so feared, admired, and even envied? They are watched

over though regulated to a debased social status? And though generally uncared for, why is it that what

they do, say, and become is of major social import? These paradoxes go beyond the politics of the white

gaze and into intra-racial dynamics. Black men watch each other, uncertain whether to fear or connect.

Black male cultures are highly self-censored. They strategically police and evaluate each other: clothing

choices, walking rhythms, consumption and utterances. At once, Black men hope to avoid social

scrutiny, stigmatization and attack; and express, to a society that cleverly and systematically denies their

full humanness, their resentment. In actuality, there is nothing particularly or inherently special about

the Black body. Instead, our social fictions and performances create it and our racial perceptions.

Moreover, these social realities are products of whiteness and the white racist thinking that infuses our

interactions and imaginations. These ways of seeing, understanding and acting are crucial to the vicious

cycle that promotes and re-produces Black pathology, and often doing so in public institutions which are

supposed to eliminate, or at least mitigate, them. Institutions such as the school, or as particularly

relevant to me, the community centre, are a part of the dense social strata from which Black men must

rise.

Aside from the various postures and word, it is these state-sanctioned pathologies, and the ability

to avoid, perform or recover from them, that ultimately define what it means to be Black and male in our

times. Those psycho-social ills structure Black men’s experiences, often trapping them in lightless

boxes, or rather prisons, “real” and imagined, imposed and/or of their own making. “Marketability”,

essentially, is a sort of racially charged social adaptiveness. More specifically, it is the process of

reinterpreting white hegemonic masculinity, one that disproportionately shapes Canadian majority

cultures’ imagination and identity performances. The trope of the “the rose that grew from concrete”,

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