The Man Who Was Almost a Man

Through Dave’s quest for identity, the story explores the complicated patterns of Black masculinity in the Jim Crow South. Dave’s distress revolves around his desire to be treated as an adult and achieve manhood. As a 17-year-old young man, he is close to adulthood, but his status as a Black man limits his claims to his own individual identity. This society presented conflicting concepts of Black masculinity, all of which contributed to the oppression of Black men. On the one hand, white supremacists dehumanized African Americans by insisting they were inferior; as such, the ideal man was always considered white, putting a limit on how capable and masculine a Black man could be considered. However, another facet of dehumanization was the insistence that non-white people were more animalistic. Black men were stereotyped as hypersexual and violent, and many Jim Crow laws and cultural practices were designed to protect white women from this supposed threat. As a result, mob violence against Black men was a constant possibility–a fact present in this story’s subtext when Dave’s mother agrees that his father needs a gun. With these conflicting factors dominating African American life, Black masculinity existed in limbo, and the only way to stay safe in this society was to stay subservient, as evidenced by Dave’s father’s deference to