Twenty-five years ago, Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Earvin “Magic” Johnson revealed to the world he had contracted HIV. This moment was historic for more reasons than one because many had viewed the disease as the “gay cancer,” a disease only homosexual men could contract. Johnson’s contraction through heterosexual sex was a milestone in the study and fight against HIV.
Johnson himself also admitted in retrospect that his engagement in a promiscuous lifestyle was something that was “part of the game.”
Today, Magic Johnson is revered as one of the most influential Black athletes of our time. His status assigned to him by white America allowed him to seamlessly remain an icon in popular culture. Triggering an unintended legacy many contemporary Black male athletes have followed.
We live in a time where both the NBA and the NFL have been and still continue to be dominated by African American men. Athletes from LeBron James and Dwayne Wade to Terrell Owens and Cameron Newton, for over two decades sports have been the host for contemporary Black masculinity. However what lies beneath this legacy in the making is a heritage of the objectification and animalization of Black men.
From sexual assault charges surrounding Ray Rice of the Baltimore Ravens to the controversial “all white girl” yacht party held by Kyrie Irving of the Cleveland Cavaliers, the cultural representation of Black men is a loaded one. These men being respected by their physicality and stature is not a new phenomenon but rather a recycled one.
“Mandingo” is a term used to describe a hypersexualized Black male. Emphasis is placed on the physical features as a personification of an animal. Black men who fall under this category are admired for their physical stature as means of sexual prowess.
Originally a tribe in Africa, the term surfaced in a 20th-century controversial novel and film about a male slave who has sex with a white woman. In reference to the early movement surrounding “eugenics,” scientists hypothesizing people of color having similar biological features to animals became widely used as rhetoric to justify slavery and discrimination against African-Americans. The image of a Black man with a white woman both enraged and frightened White America, thus becoming widely seen as taboo.
Over time, this taboo was translated into other forms of popular culture. As African Americans men such as Jackie Robinson and Jesse Owens found success in sports, these places rather subconsciously perpetuated age-old images of hypersexual masculinity. By placing emphasis on physical features, such as fast legs, big arms, developed chests, these men were becoming seen as sexual deviants. By labeling these men as sexual deviants, we as Black America have become desensitized to the images of Black hyper masculinity in sport culture, prolonging the unintended legacy for generations to come.
