Beyond Death and Jail

Anti-Blackness, Black Masculinity, and the Demonic Imagination

Ronald B. Neal

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2024
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9798216337102
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Beyond Death and Jail: Anti-Blackness, Black Masculinity, and the Demonic Imagination calls for a complete reassessment and overhaul of ethical, political, and religious thinking with respect to anti-Blackness and Black masculinity in the United States. In light of the prison industrial complex and a decade of homicide (2012-2022) of Black men and Black boys which spawned the Movement for Black Lives, Ronald B. Neal calls attention to a crisis of imagination on the part of elite social activists and intellectuals. Neal questions more than four decades of academic theory concerned with justice which has and continues to inform the most popular expressions of Black American activism. Readers are asked to grapple with the dilemmas which plague Black men and Black boys as a starting point for a reinvigorated imagination including new theories of justice and new paradigms of action. Neal contends that we can do better in those efforts that seek to engage and overcome anti-Blackness in the United States.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Death of a Nation: Black Masculinity and the Failures of Black Leadership
• Chapter 2: We Don’t Need Another Savior: Intellectuals, Activists, and the Myth of the Black Messiah
• Chapter 3: The Thrill Is Gone: The Obama Era and the Obsolescence of Black Orthodoxy
• Chapter 4: The Demonic Imagination: Black Masculinity and the Abominations of Religion and Theology in the United States
• Chapter 5: Who’s Afraid of Black Men?: Black Women and White Saviors
• Chapter 6: Legal Misandry: The Prosecutor Who Is Afraid of Black Men
• Chapter 7: Detox: Purging the Demonic
• Chapter 8: The Saga Continues: Cruel and Unusual Punishment, State-Based Fatherhood, and the Rage for Order in the United States
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author