Black Concepts

            The social construction of gender is all around us. It is something that we created yet also it creates us whether we mean to or not and it can have the power to add or detract from the person who we are trying to be. Throughout history gender and gender roles have played a major factor in all societies, whether they were successful or not. We live in a patriarchal dominated society that stresses leadership, manhood, and aggressiveness for men while women are looked more for comfort, passiveness, and calmness. These different traits help mold our view of what it is to be masculine and feminine as we grow up. Not surprising is the fact that in history, our views have also been gendered because all people are inescapable from social conditions that mold their views on the world. The works of David Walker and Ida B. Wells were both groundbreaking and similar in terms of the message that they were trying to convey to the public, yet their styles were much different from each other because of the specific gender roles from their time period. Both of their works are highly praised throughout time but a closer look will unveil that although they were both after the black public in general, their perceptions of gender greatly affected their conceptualizations of "blackness".
             Appeal, by David Walker, is a powerful message sent to the black race and specifically the black male. The work itself is very masculine in nature and it forces the reader to face the issue that was at hand in a very militant, Black Panther mannerism. Walker stressed the ability of black men to act on behalf of their race. His article urged them to great immediate action. Future progress he believed depended on the initiative shown by black men, too many of whom he charged, were not fulfilling their responsibilities to the race. Walker stressed that the failure of black men to fulfill their manly roles protecting black people from the onslaught of racial prejudice had to often been a fault among them.