Black Men from behind the Veil

Yancy offers another outstanding collection of essays. Black Men behind the Veil provides a rich understanding of what being a Black man in an anti-Black society is like…. Yancy’s editorial fecundity and the contributors' acumen vis-á-vis the history of philosophy and their ability to diagnose the present moment will be much appreciated by readers with interests in philosophy, race, Blackness, contemporary US culture, and criminal justice. Though targeted at those working in philosophy of race and sociology, the book will most certainly appeal to a general audience concerned with matters of race and justice. Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

* Choice Reviews *

A masterful anthology that reveals the absolute evil of racial misandry. Voices that live the experience of anti-Black misandry that scream the utter sadness expressed by W.E.B. DuBois at the death of his son in 'Of the Passing of the First-Born.' By death, his son escaped the terror of life as a Black man. A life that would be constantly on a tightrope, trapped in a fixed identity of demeaning stereotypes that would portray him as the embodiment of laziness, hyper-masculinity, and hyper-patriarchy: a predator, failed parent, and useless husband. Black Men from Behind the Veil: Ontological Interrogations gives us new theories, tools, concepts, and terms that are not trapped in a world that treats the ontological being—the collective population of Black men—as an undifferentiated debased essence. Black men tell their story.

-- Leonard Harris, Purdue University

In a characterstically brilliant, relevant, and prophetic series of books edited by George Yancy, we are treated to a series of well-crafted essays that carefully examine the interiors of human pain embedded in blackness. This book should be mandatory reading in schools and universities where critical race theory is being fought against. Here is a book that could respond to that resistance with scholarly rigor and high intelligence by leading scholars at the top of their fields. I am much impressed by this long-awaited book.

-- Teodros Kiros, Berklee College of Music

Black Men from behind the Veil collects essays from a diverse and vibrant cross-section of contemporary philosophers of race and black male studies. This text stands out as both an elegy for those who still can't breathe and a future of that philosophical logos that starts, with a gasp, in the grasping of that which is disclosed and concealed in those black bodies behind the veil, and the continuance of the violence that enshrouds them/us. The authors in this collection focus our attention on anti-black violence and its traditions and stands out as a challenge for its readers to take up this thinking, this situation, this relation to being, and think them anew without apologetics and excuses.

-- Alfred Frankowski, Southern Illinois University Carbon