“What a man ought to be, he is far from”: Collective meanings of masculinity and race in media

The products of popular culture not only provide pleasure but also impart information about our gendered and racial identities. In line with feminist and critical race theories, we used collective memory work to encourage young men to recall, examine, and analyze their earliest memories of media to connect their individual experiences to shared experiences of similar and/or different groups in society. We present the men's memories interwoven with analysis and interpretations focusing on four major themes: (a) media perpetuates violent/aggressive expectations of men and women as objects; (b) men's leisure is marked by racial stereotypes; (c) men use media to construct racial identity; (d) media can be used as a catalyst for understanding White male privilege. The process also gave participants an opportunity to engage the “crisis of representation” as they solidified and challenged their own hegemonic thinking in relation to what it means to be men of different races.