Photo by Jamie Taete for the VICE NYFW Photo Blog.  There were a
lot of powerful scenes in Quentin Tarantino’s “crap
masterpieceDjango Unchained. But the film’s most haunting moment
for me was when the freed-slave-turned-bounty-hunter title
character was hanging upside down, butt-ass naked, with his
genitals threatened by a red-hot blade wielded by a viciously
racist white slaver. Even though Django ultimately escaped
castration, the scene was a reminder of the literal and
metaphorical emasculation of black men that has gone on, at both
the systemic and individual levels, in America since before the
states got their independence from England.  Black masculinity
isn’t just a topic for discussion among historians and other
academics. Recent developments, like the rise of gangster rap,
which contributed to the thugification of the black male in
modern media, and the country’s first black president who
asserts his manhood through his intellect, have altered the
paths by which black males can and do express themse