Abstract
Within the context of racial caste and the “stickiness” of criminal labels, men struggle to craft positive masculine identities. Contesting racial-criminal stigma requires men of color to challenge controlling images of violent Black men. Analyzing narratives of 45 millennial men in Philadelphia, we identify redemption bids and redemptive generativity as ways of defying social stigma. Redemption, which has been highlighted in the desistance literature, is a central concern of the men of color we studied, regardless of prior law-breaking or system involvement. Because a criminal history is presumed regardless of past behavior, many men of color engage in performances of “making good” similar to those who were actively engaged in the work of desistance.
Keywords
Introduction
To grow up as a man of color in the US requires navigating racial-criminal stigma resulting from pervasive images and narratives that Black and brown men are essentially violent and in need of control (Muhammad, 2010; Rios, 2011; Russell-Brown, 2009). Although all individuals who are “marked” by a criminal record must manage stigma associated with system-involvement (Pager, 2003), boys of color encounter criminalization of their behavior as early as preschool, where they are often labeled as oppositional troublemakers, and throughout their development where they encounter widespread expectations of violence and untrustworthiness. The “criminalblackman” (Russell-Brown, 2009) or “superpredator” (DiIulio, 1995) stereotypes have real effects; boys and men of color are significantly more likely than their white counterparts to be brutalized or killed by police (Crutchfield et al., 2012; Lautenschlager & Omori, 2019; Morrow et al., 2017; Ross, 2015). Being stopped, questioned, and frisked is part of the “regular routine” as they move about public space (Jones, 2014). Moreover, to develop a positive masculine adult sense of self, Black and brown men must resist internalizing racial-criminal stigma, as well as a host of other negative predictions about their potential as fathers, romantic partners, employees, and productive citizens (Fader, 2013).
Theory and research suggest that managing spoiled identities involves a dynamic interplay of self and society, whereby the discredited individual presents disidentifiers, or signals challenging negative perceptions (Goffman, 1963). To the extent that this performance is credible to others, it becomes more fully internalized by the individual, whose belief then strengthens future performances and is eventually realized as part of the core self (Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934). Narrative criminology has detailed this process for individuals who are working to desist from offending or substance use (Maruna, 2001; Stone, 2016). Redemption scripts are narratives that allow individuals to present themselves as essentially good, and typically center generativity, or acts of giving back to future generations or their communities (McAdams, 2006). In helping others, these “wounded healers” or “credible messengers” can counter stigma by nurturing a self that is positive and productive. Recent research documents the racialized and gendered nature of generativity, grounding desistance within both social structure (e.g., racial caste, economic, and social exclusion) and cultural scripts for social interaction; this work challenges depictions of desistance as an individual-level process (Jones, 2018).
This study examines how men of color resist the racial-criminal stigma they encounter in various social spaces. We find that men managing stigma commonly engaged in redemptive storytelling and generative activities, consistent with the desistance literature. However, these narratives were also common among men of color who had either desisted many years ago or who had no history of criminal offending whatsoever. Because a criminal history is presumed regardless of past behavior, many men of color engage in the same performances of “making good” as those who were actively engaged in the work of desistance. We detail the nature of these redemptive activities, including their role in constructing coherent masculine adult and racial identities. In the process, we wrestle with the meaning of the narratives by Black men who “don’t want to be a statistic.” We conclude by discussing ways of fostering positive relationships for men facing racial-criminal stigma.
Review of the Literature
Criminal and Racial-Criminal Stigma
Much has been written about the stigma of a criminal record or incarceration history, including micro-level treatments of a spoiled identity (Goffman, 1963; Stone, 2016) and macro-level (structural) forms of labeling. Each level of compounded stigma has real effects on opportunity structures and life outcomes (Middlemass, 2017; Pager, 2003; Wakefield & Uggen, 2010). Recent meso-level analyses address carceral citizenship, documenting how the criminal legal system erodes both material and perceived relationships with the state (Miller & Stuart, 2017; Sered, 2021). Together, this work underscores the negative consequences of legal system contact, concluding that they are far-reaching in scope, encompassing employment, housing, financial stability, status on the romantic marketplace, and secondary criminalization of family members (Comfort, 2003; Quillian et al., 2020; Smith, 2019); durable (Uggen & Blahnik, 2016); and, owing to technological advances, increasingly public (Lageson, 2016).
The stain of criminal stigma is racialized and gendered, with controlling images of Black and Latino men often as violent or threatening (Anderson, 1999; Rios, 2011) and those of their female counterparts often as disrespectful, loud, and “unladylike” (Morris, 2016). The criminalization of Black children starts as early as pre-school, where they are more than three times as likely as white children to be suspended (US Department of Education, 2016). A “youth control complex” extends from educational settings to community centers, interactions with neighbors, and police and probation officers, where young men of color are criminalized and hyper-surveilled (Rios, 2011).
Proactive policing strategies, which have dominated law enforcement practice for the last three decades, have made police and other forms of surveillance omnipresent in impoverished communities of color, resulting in a “regular routine” of stop and frisks that many young people of color experience on a regular basis (Jones, 2014). The fusing of racial and criminal stigma is crystalized in Russell’s concept of the “criminalblackman,” which is reinforced by distorted media accounts of Black men’s involvement in crime. The recent attention to state violence after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police is supported by a volume of literature about systemic racial disparities in the presumption of violence and danger in use of deadly force (Crutchfield et al., 2012; Hinton & Cook, 2021; Lautenschlager & Omori, 2019; Morrow et al., 2017; Ross, 2015). The conflation of criminal labels with men of color has also been established in employment research, which finds that hiring agents without access to criminal records apply statistical discrimination to Black and Hispanic applicants, assuming a felony history in the absence of information (Doleac & Hansen, 2020).
As men of color develop, many build up an emotional reservoir of predictions of failure directed at them by outsiders representing major social institutions. As youth, they are frequently identified as “at-risk” and consequently, often adjust their aspirations downward, defining success as avoiding risky outcomes such as arrest, teen pregnancy, school dropout, or drug addiction (Fader, 2013; Ray, 2017). In educational settings, they often encounter assumptions that they are disinterested in learning and are frequently subject to disciplinary action, leading many boys of color to worry about “becoming a statistic” through dropout or pushout (Brooms, 2020; Rios, 2011). These negative predictions interact with other stereotypes, such as jobless, idle, or financially irresponsible or as “deadbeat dads” (Cammett, 2014). With some basic premises of racial-criminal stigma established, we turn now to how the desistance literature helps us understand its management.
Identity Repair Through Redemption Narratives and Generative Activity
Research and theory on identity repair in response to criminal labels are typically found in desistance studies detailing the subjective processes that undergird the termination of offending. Maruna’s (2001) pathbreaking work finds that successful “desisters” employ redemption scripts supporting a recasting of the self. Redemption scripts are a narrative device for constructing a coherent autobiography, including how one’s criminal past was a “necessary precursor” to their law-abiding present and future (Stone, 2016, p. 957). Individuals drawing on these self-stories are highly agentic, believing that they control their futures; emphasize the essential and stable goodness of the self; and engage in generativity, or acts of giving back to others, particularly to members of future generations (Maruna, 2001). “Persisters,” by contrast, use condemnation scripts, framing themselves as the victim of circumstance, or subject to luck or fate.
The audiences for these narrative scripts are a critical but often underappreciated element of their successful deployment. Meadian (1934) identity theory specifies an interplay between self and other, whereby we project or perform a version of self that is then reflected as more or less believable. Those reflections, conveyed through social interaction (verbal and non-verbal cues), solidify the individual’s identity or reframe it. To apply this to desistance, the core tasks of redemption are to (1) make an internal process of change visible through generative activities, and (2) convince others that the change is authentic and lasting. The term “performance” does not suggest inauthenticity but rather the requirement that others endorse it in order to be believable both to them and to oneself. Identity is unlikely to be sustained without validation by others, and convincing members of social audiences that criminal activity is in the past—or not relevant at all—may be especially difficult (Lofland, 1969).
Jones (2018) extends this idea by arguing that this interactional process is raced and gendered—that is, that the process of redemption for the Black men she studied was grounded in, and sometimes limited by, the racial-gender scripts used by neighborhood residents. Conservative Black gender ideologies touted by community leaders in the Fillmore community created a conundrum for men who were working to desist from offending. On one hand, these leaders lamented Black men’s role in perpetuating violence, while on the other, pressured them to serve as providers and protectors. With limited opportunities to fulfill these roles through legitimate employment opportunities, these expectations sometimes had the unintended effect of pushing the men into illegal street activity (see also Henson, 2022).
Other models of masculinity, however, may support redemption and generativity. Carlsson’s (2013) research found that desisters adopted a new, adult version of masculinity that aligned themselves with prosocial institutions such as work and marriage. By contrast, persisters employed a more juvenile definition of “real men” based on the independence stemming from criminal offending. Umamaheswar (2020) concluded that formerly incarcerated men frequently adopt “hybrid masculinities” which combine the traditional provider-protector role with more stereotypically feminized characteristics such as loyalty, humility, and emotional expressiveness. This deliberate attempt to redefine adult masculinity in more expansive terms, she argues, was demonstrated by men who were committed to desistance. Finally, Rawls and Duck’s (2020) study of white and Black interaction orders find that, “Black masculinity emphasizes equality and community over individual self-interest and treats responsibility for others as more important than masculine self-reliance and control” (p. 105). This suggests that redemptive generativity may be consistent with, not contrary to, Black masculine identity construction.
This study applies an interactional and intersectional lens to understand the racial and gendered nature of stigma management, namely the resistance of racial-criminal stigma employed by men of color who adopt counternarratives of redemptive generativity. When we argue that men of color employ racialized and gendered narratives, we are not asserting that white men or women of color do not experience stigma or the perceived need to redeem themselves, but building upon Jones (2018), that they are shaped by cultural scripts reflecting racial-gender ideologies and conveyed through social interactions.
Research Methodology
The Frankford Men’s Study was carried out 2014 to 2019 and integrated in-depth interviews with 45 men residing in the Frankford, Philadelphia community with concurrent participant observation at a variety of the neighborhood’s key institutions (e.g., churches, community centers, barber shops) and events (e.g., community meetings, resource fairs). The purpose of the study was to examine perceptions and trajectories of millennial men (born 1981–1996) who came of age during a rapidly expanding criminal legal apparatus and declining labor force opportunities. Members of this sample lived in a community known citywide for being a site of a high degree of churn caused by citizens leaving and returning to the community from jails and prisons (Clear et al., 2001). Frankford is an impoverished, racially diverse neighborhood located in the busiest police district in Philadelphia.
At the midpoint of the study, the 19124 zip code which roughly mirrors the boundaries of Frankford had over 69,000 residents, 42% of whom were Black, 38% were Hispanic of any race, and one-third non-Hispanic white (U.S. Census Bureau, 2016 5-year estimates). As Table 1 shows, Frankford’s rate of violence was nearly double that for Philadelphia as a whole and almost five times the national rate. More than one-third of Frankford households are below the federally established poverty line, compared to one-quarter in Philadelphia and one-seventh nationally. Unemployment, median salaries, and the proportion of renter-occupied houses all follow the same pattern. Frankford residents are just as likely as other Philadelphians but less likely than Americans not to have a high school diploma.
Crime and Demographic Comparisons.
Note. All except those noted are from Census American Community Survey, 2016 5-year estimate.
DataHub Philly, compiled from FBI Uniform Crime Report.
FBI Uniform Crime Report.
We recruited a racially diverse sample of men without (with one exception) 4-year degrees. Many respondents identified as belonging to multiple racial or ethnic groups, which made simplistic classifications impossible. The sample included: 23 men who identified as Black (4 of whom also identified as Latino, 1 Asian, and 1 white); 5 as Latino (1 of whom also identified as white); and 17 as white (1 of whom also identified as Black and 1 as Asian). Where men identified as biracial, we coded them as “men of color” when they appeared non-white, 1 assuming that representatives of other social institutions would do the same. Of the 45, 26 had at least a high school diploma and 19 had less education. Ages ranged from 23 to 39 years old at the time of initial interview. All men resided in Frankford for at least a year, and many were lifelong residents.
Men were recruited through advertising, referrals, and approaching them in public. Referrals came from churches, community agencies, landlords, residents, and study participants. Interviews were conducted in a private room in a Frankford church. Most interviews lasted 2 to 4 hours and were recorded and transcribed for analysis. Field notes provided additional details. Interviews covered a range of topics, including a comprehensive life history and questions centering on stigma, masculinity, and adulthood. Follow-up interviews were conducted in person or by phone with 18 of the original participants. Official criminal record checks were conducted using the public Pennsylvania Courts database and those from nearby states, including New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. These provided a history of adult contact with the system prior to the interview and any new contact in the months or years following the interview.
Coding and analysis of the interview data involved constructing detailed biographies for each of the study participants that contained interview excerpts and summary details for a standardized set of descriptive codes (e.g., family of origin, neighborhood use, social ties). This technique provided the important benefit of allowing each piece of data to remain contextualized within men’s life histories, rather than being parsed out into constituent categories. We also recorded the presence or absence of approximately 50 key participant characteristics, such as currently employed, incarceration history, married, etc. This allowed for easy counts of these items and sorting of cases to engage in comparisons. Redemption bids and redemptive generativity were inductive themes that were not part of our original coding guide. We coded redemption bids when narrators made a claim to being a good person or constructed law-breaking or unemployment in moral terms (as being “wrong”). Three types of generativity were coded: volunteer work, mentoring, and paid forms of care such as employment at a non-profit organization or work in home health care or nursing. These, along with demographic characteristics of the sample are in Table 2 below.
Frankford Men’s Study Demographics, Crime/System Involvement, Redemption Bids, and Generative Activities.
Note. W = Presented as white, grouped with white men in analysis; •R = Undertaken as part of organized recovery house activities; * = Gen X (born 1979).
Analytical memos (Emerson et al., 2011) were developed to integrate findings from extant literature with those from the study and allowed us to test tenable propositions (Anderson, 2002). This process, consistent with grounded theory, allowed for dialectic between inductive and deductive coding, and for data collection and analysis to operate in an iterative fashion (Charmaz, 2006; Glaser & Strauss, 1967). All named authors shared responsibility for data collection and analysis, with regular meetings to interpret patterns and discuss areas of (dis)agreement. Respondents are given pseudonyms. We do not mask the name of the community, which allows for identification of all relevant structural features of the neighborhood and establishes a baseline for others (Murphy & Jerolmack, 2016).
Because of our interest in racial-criminal stigma, this analysis focuses most heavily on the 28 men who identified as Black and Latino. We make limited comparisons to white participants but are cautious about generalizations because men in recovery were overrepresented among our white sample.
Results
Criminal and Racial-Criminal Stigma
The Frankford men possessed multiple signifiers of stigma. Some, like disabilities, addiction, or homelessness were visible. Others, like criminal histories, were often assumed based on skin color. Although we did not select respondents based on criminal involvement or system contact, 24 of the 45 men had an official criminal record, and 3 more told us about system contact that was missing from the public records. Of the 28 men of color, 8 reported no history of criminal involvement and had no criminal records and 4 more self-reported a history of criminal activity but had no records.
Respondents of color described a variety of venues in which they experienced racial-criminal stigma, or being criminalized for their skin color, with school, work, and interactions with police as the most identified sites. For example, Angel, a 33-year-old Latino man recounted his experiences in Catholic school. As one of only a few students of color, he faced stigma and racial profiling that started in grade school.
That was a nightmare—I literally got picked on every day by the teachers. Every day because I was Puerto Rican and I came from the hood. There was a period in 6th grade where I was searched every week and I thought it was normal so I’m like, okay, I guess they do this to other kids. I didn’t tell my grandparents; I didn’t tell my mom. And finally, I was like, ‘I don’t ever see any other kids in here. Like why you guys always searching me?’ They’re like, ‘Well, somebody told us you had a knife.’ ‘What do you mean, a knife! I don’t have a knife!’ And then I told my mom and [she] cussed everybody out.
But racist slurs from educators did not stop there.
The next year in 7th grade my English teacher called me a ‘Spic’. . .I’m like, ‘You called me a what!?’ . . . So, I called my mom again and she came up there again and the teacher started crying and my mom was like ‘I don’t want to see your tears, wipe them away, I don’t care about those things,’ and my grandfather didn’t pay [tuition] for the rest of that semester. And then in 8th grade another teacher told me that by the time I was 16, I was going to drop out and I was going to become a junkie.
Angel, who had no criminal record, also recounted that he regularly wears “slacks” to signal to police that he is a productive citizen on his way to work.
Lewis, a 30-year-old Black man experienced racial-criminal stigma at the nursing facility where he worked when he reported being falsely accused of having a weapon and the police were called. He was later dismissed from the job, which had lasting effects on his ability to find new employment. “Why would I bring a firearm to my job? . . .Those white folk don’t play, they take me forever away, forever away!” Here, Lewis expresses his vulnerability to police contact and the possibility of being brought up on false charges because of systemic racism in the workplace. Later, we will describe his experiences of racial profiling in his car.
Several Black men (but interestingly, none of the non-Black Hispanic men) we interviewed emphasized that they “didn’t want to become a statistic” (Brooms, 2020). By this, we believe they meant that they were conscious of controlling images of young Black men and had been subject to numerous negative predictions about their futures. A statistic is a summary measure, meant to reduce large numbers and report averages. Black (and presumably all) men don’t want to be summed up—they want to be individuated and apprehended as full human beings. They wanted to be understood and related to based on personalized characteristics, for their goodness and generosity, and non-stereotypical aspects of their character. They dreamed of disproving negative assumptions and “beating the odds,” which many accomplished through redemption bids and redemptive generativity.
Redemption Bids
Although some men we interviewed internalized stigma directed at them throughout their lives, it was far more common for them to resist these labels and to craft counter-narratives of redemption consistent with those found in the desistance literature (Maruna, 2001). Redemption is a deliberate activity designed to restore one’s standing in the eyes of wider society or groups of significant others against whom one measures oneself. Redemption is not a state, but a process of reclaiming and reframing one’s identity in opposition to stereotypical labels or negative predictions. Redemption has a moral connotation grounded in the essential goodness of the self.
We distinguish between redemption bids and redemptive generativity. Redemption bids are short-term assertions of self that run counter to stigmatic labeling and are consistent with Goffman’s (1963) “disidentifiers.” These are the small moral victories celebrated when a stereotype is proved wrong. Consider Lewis, the narrator who lost his job after being falsely accused of bringing a weapon to work. Lewis also experienced regular and blatant racial profiling while driving in Philadelphia. Once, a police officer taunted Lewis by boasting that he specifically looked to pull over Black men. He found one experience especially terrifying and humiliating. An officer stopped his car because its registration was expired. He recounted the events in staccato: “Had my seatbelt on. He’s got sunglasses on, he’s the man. Jumped out of his car with his gun drawn, with his partner. I tell my son, ‘Everything’s going to be okay. Son, watch your father. You okay.’ Cop runs to the window. ‘If anybody move, I’m going to shoot somebody.’ [I’ve got] hands on the wheel, not saying anything, not doing anything.” Lewis was cuffed and put in the back of the cruiser while the officer checked for warrants and his 5-year-old son sat alone in the backseat, crying. Immediately afterward, Lewis took care of the paperwork and the fines. When he faced the same situation again, he felt vindicated when it ended differently.
When I go back to [the] neighborhood, I get pulled over by same officer. I looked for that same cop, just so I can wipe that dumb smirk off his face. From that moment on, I love handing him everything legit. When a man make you feel like they can squash you in front of you children, hurt me, hurt my son, arrest me. Never will I let that happen again. . .Now I say, I like it when cops pull a Black man over thinking he’s going to lock them up and has to let them go.
Lewis’s redemption bid was grounded in his resistance to a form of stigma that was aimed at both his racial identity and his masculinity, which was diminished when the police “squashed” him in front of his son. It is worth noting that Lewis relived this redemption through the experience of other Black men who defied the odds.
Redemption bids were also made during the interview process (Ispa-Landa, 2019; McAdams, 2006). For example, Mateo (29, Latino) explained why he would never burgle someone’s home, but had, in the past, broken into businesses to steal: “I’m a criminal, but I got morals.” Nasir (34, Black) emphasized the human toll of violence: “I’m not violent even though I like to box and. . .I’d rather use my head because that’s the last resort. . .that amounts to people getting hurt.” Christian (26, Black): “I got dared to throw this brick into someone’s windshield. . . But thinking about it now. . . I feel so bad for it; if I could go back and pay for it.” Of the 28 men of color in this sample, 18 made redemption bids, including 5 men who had no criminal involvement or record and another 3 men who had an offending history but no record. By comparison, 5 of 17 white men made redemption bids. All five reported experiencing stigma from non-criminal sources, like being underemployed (Anthony); homeless and in recovery (TJ, Jason); living with mental illness (Luke); or having visible disabilities such as a traumatic brain injury (Declan).
The audience for redemption bids is diffuse: it could be comprised of family members, teachers, employers, police and probation officers, and even journalists and researchers like ourselves. Several men viewed participating in our study as a way of giving back and hoped that the final product would be one that reflected well on the community and on Black men specifically. David, a 26-year-old reported: Not just speaking for myself, but speaking for all these young Black males, it’s good that you’re telling this story and you need to find more . . . not just the ones that have been in and out of the system, but the positive Black men who are trying to stay above water. It’s a lot more of us out there, but they don’t get spoken about as much because there’s so much hate put on them. There’s more of a stigma for us than it is for the guys that has been in and out of gangs and stuff, because we’re trying so much harder. . . That’s why I felt it was so important to talk to you, because you’re telling so many great stories about Black men in our community, so that their eyes are opened, so that they see us. Cause we’re like exhibits at the zoo or something to them.
Here, David, a Black pastor’s son with no history of criminal activity, asserts that he feels racial stigma, which is connected to community stigma. It is notable also that David engaged in generativity, volunteering by leading his local church’s youth group.
Redemptive Generativity
Redemptive generativity, in contrast to bids, are longer-term projects to crystallize a new identity in the face of stigma and labeling. Generativity is an adult’s concern for or commitment to promoting the welfare and development of future generations. . . Generativity is about parenting, teaching, mentoring, leading, providing for others, caring for and nurturing young people or those in need, working hard to make things better for the future, aiming to leave a positive legacy. (McAdams, 2006, p. xi)
As noted above, generativity is a key element of the redemption scripts described in desistance research (Maruna, 2001; Stone, 2016). As Table 2 indicates, 20 of the 28 men of color reported some form of generativity, with informal mentoring—typically of neighborhood children—most frequently mentioned.
Kareem was a 26-year-old Black and Korean man and life-long resident of Frankford. While earning mediocre but passing grades in high school, he was among a group of boys who skipped classes and began selling marijuana and eventually cocaine. After graduation, his drug sales career took off and he began to accumulate shoeboxes of cash under his bed. As a drug seller, he was making “more money than I’ve ever seen with any of them jobs.” “I’m really not a bad person, just money hungry,” he commented, and then explained: “Everybody want to be around you, you making money, you can do what you want, get what you want, it felt good. Instead of going to class, working. . . I was helping my family with bills, feeling like a man.” Here, he engages a traditional “provider” definition of masculinity, and even when recounting illegal activities, uses a generative frame.
Eventually, his luck ran out. He was arrested several times in the following 2—years. He spent just under a year in jail and began to rethink his decisions. “Me and my cellie [cellmate], he was older [around 30], we used to be talking to each other about what we could do better, like, when we get out of this situation, like our girls and our family [were] out there with nothing while we’re in here, without us.” This narrative demonstrates concern for the consequences of his actions on others, developed through ongoing interactions with his older cellmate.
Kareem, who was 23 by the time of his release, cemented his commitment to going straight. With a felony record, he struggled to find legal work and lost his college scholarship. He began mentoring the young men he coached on his alma mater’s football team, talking to them about avoiding his mistakes and learning from his failures. Using his substantial social capital in the community, he connected them to job opportunities. Eventually, he began his own community program for boys in Frankford, designed to help them work through the challenges they regularly faced, instill a sense of racial consciousness, and find a path to entrepreneurship. With his own money, he formed a nonprofit organization and launched a slick website to draw the attention of funders. His work was recognized by a community-based social service agency, which hired him as its volunteer coordinator. Today, Kareem is 32 years old, has remained arrest-free for more than a decade, and is fulfilling his dream of becoming a community activist and leader. He has a strong sense of generativity in relation to his community, its youth, and his family. Moreover, he both practices and teaches the young men he works with racial literacy, or the knowledge and understanding of systemic racism used to help mitigate its effects (Twine, 2004). It is worth noting that his focus is teaching them racially- and gender-specific lessons.
Kareem’s story demonstrates how he redeemed himself and repaired his identity after incarceration by giving back, gradually turning his service to others into a personally rewarding career. He was a go-to resource in the community, a fact that filled him with visible pride. His self-described “mistakes” and “failures” were transformed into salutary lessons for the boys he mentored, rebuilding his own narrative and reinforcing his trajectory from drug sales and incarceration to a constructive adult life. Kareem is a “wounded healer” (Maruna, 2001) or a “credible messenger,” a person who is uniquely situated to influence youth because he shares their experiences. In turn, his redemption narrative as a straight-talking Black male role model was affirmed by members of the community, helping to strengthen his new identity.
But a criminal history was not a necessary precursor for redemptive generativity. Christian, who earlier recounted his regret at throwing a brick through a window, redeemed himself in two senses. He was expelled from high school and sent to an alternative school for kids with disciplinary problems. He attended eight days before dropping out, saying that the schoolwork was designed “for idiots” and the building was set up “like a jail.” His family then sent him off to a wealthy suburb in New Jersey to live with an uncle, who enrolled him in a better school and supervised his studies. He excelled academically and was exposed to opportunities for more privileged students. By leaving Frankford, he disproved teachers’ and administrators’ predictions of failure. He was keenly aware that his peers who remained in the city did not enjoy these advantages; indeed, the system was stacked against all Black youth. “I kind of felt as though I kind of like out-beat it [the system], cheat it a little bit, I was able to graduate on time even though I did all that [got in trouble] and then my friends are still like feeling the burden of [an impoverished school]. So that kind of made me feel a little bit good about myself.” His assertion that he “beat,” or even “cheated” the system implies that he views it as deliberately designed to fail and eject Black youth, leading to their incarceration and exclusion from legal employment. Christian had earned an associate’s degree and certifications needed to become a computer systems technician, which he describes as his “passion.”
Christian was also a father and acted as a mentor to neighborhood kids. As he explained, “I think fatherhood means to be trying to teach, it doesn’t even have to be just my daughter, just the younger generation, . . . every child, it’s like ‘each one teach one’ (a phrase common in the African American community). I try to teach her to be better than what I was. I know all the things I know I did wrong so I try to teach the same things to her but opposite.”
He also serves as an informal credible messenger to encourage the next generation to stay in school. “I ask them, how you doing in school, to show them I care about school, and just like tell them to keep doing this. . . I try to be the voice of reason to get them to understand. . . the older perspective.”
Angel, whose schoolteacher predicted he would become a “junkie” is now a stably married father and has built his redemption on family, faith, and community. He and his family moved to Frankford to attend a new church and to seek better job opportunities. During our field research at civic association and violence prevention meetings, he was often the only man under age 40 in the room. He loved his community and saw the drug activity on his block as an opportunity to do informal outreach on his front stoop. “We’ve made relationships in the area, we come to community meetings. . . we’ve had drug dealers sitting on our porch, and we’ve argued with people and all while still making positive moves.”
Angel’s redemption generativity led to upward mobility. The social ties he built through his community engagement led him to meet his landlord, who gave them a break on rent in exchange for sweat equity in repairing the house. Angel advocates for more Black- and brown-owned businesses in the community and views himself as “an asset” to the neighborhood. When we asked about his dream for the future, Angel said: “My ideal job . . . would be helping people, possibly community development, working hands-on with the city and the neighborhood to better the neighborhood. My ultimate goal is to become a pastor. . .It doesn’t pay as much as people think it does but the reward ain’t the money. It’s a lot of joy in seeing people change.”
Marvin is a Black 24-year-old stay-at-home father whose narrative was replete with examples of stigma management. Although he reported no criminal involvement and had no arrest record, he was regularly stopped, frisked, and “harassed” by police in public. He reported, “when I was growing up, I was taught that us as Black males, where we was living at, we weren’t gonna make it [live] past 14-15.” Like many men of color in our sample, Marvin was expelled from school (for fighting) and sent to the same disciplinary school that Christian briefly attended. He also left before completing his diploma. He was unemployed and unsuccessfully looking for work; he spent his days in charge of the household, cooking and cleaning, and caring for his 4-year-old daughter. His fiancé worked full-time as a dietician and was the family’s primary breadwinner. Although Marvin reported that his male friends respected him for taking care of his family, they also emasculated him for his domestic roles. He hinted that his fiancé underappreciated his effort and framed it as a sacrifice for the family unit: She may come down on [me] like “you ain’t doing nothing” but I was actually the one who sat back and let her get her life together. [I] let her go to school and get a job first while I watched the child – didn’t put her in daycare or nothing. It should be seen as, you’re lucky to have a man who would take care of the child while you’re doing what you’re doing. A lot of men don’t take care of their child at all. Sometimes I want to forget about even looking for a job because I want to feel appreciated for who I am and not just the money.
Marvin was managing stigma from all fronts, including the police’s assumption that he was involved in criminal activity, his lack of educational credentials and unemployed status, and his adoption of stereotypically female gender roles. He regained some status by contributing $500 to the household each month doing tattoos and haircuts—traditionally masculine activities—in his “man cave” in the basement. Meanwhile, he campaigned to get his fiancé and friends to view care as work and served as an informal mentor to “everybody on my block:” I don’t know why they come to me, but they do. I’m always talking to them for hours. The same people that I help get jobs but I still haven’t found one. . . It’s important to see that they’re listening to what I’m saying and doing something with their lives. I try to instill the lesson to get out [of] the streets – it’s not worth it anymore. . . I try to be a role model ‘cause I’ve never been locked up. . . Everybody calls me from [jail] ‘cause they know I’ll answer.
Marvin is also a member of a local support group for Black men run by David’s father (the pastor). The men discuss strategies for managing racial exclusion from jobs and encourage entrepreneurship as a way of generating income and developing a wider base of Black-owned businesses. These older men, who are like the law-abiding, churchgoing “old heads” that Anderson (1999) argues have abandoned inner-city communities, are also engaged in generative activity. It worthwhile to consider how entrepreneurship, which is typically thought of as a highly individualistic endeavor, has been framed as generative when it expands the base of Black-owned commerce.
White Men, Stigma, and Redemptive Generativity
Of the 17 white men in the study, 10 reported helping with block clean-up or serving meals at the church, 5 of whom described this as part of their recovery house activities. Recovering men also employed narratives with a redemptive arc, striving to present themselves as changed people. However, few mentioned experiencing stigma, perhaps because the opioid epidemic has been largely framed as a public health problem (Shachar et al, 2020). Importantly, 9 of the 17 white men and 9 of 14 recovering men were employed, which is consistent with traditional definitions of masculinity. Moreover, despite felony records being common among recovering men, they made above-average wages in the lucrative building trades sector.
A handful of white men presented narratives that centered stigma. Declan, 32, had been permanently disabled by a traumatic brain injury when he was 17. He “burned a lot of bridges” with his pre-accident peer group because of his violent rages. He admits to being racist prior to his accident but has found that afterward, when his white friends disappeared, “Black people was just embracing me and I was like, these are my people, dog.” Unable to work in a formal position because of his disability, Declan began volunteering for an AIDS organization in Center City.
At first I was weirded out cause it’s a lot of gay people up there and I was like eh, it just made me feel uncomfortable, but then I was like, they’re great people, I’m cool with it. Like the one guy used to always hit on me, which you know at first I was like eh, and then I started to become flattered by it, I was like I’m not gay, but thank you [laughs].
Finding a community of people who accepted his limitations without judgment was a profound experience for Declan. He feels deeply misunderstood whenever he goes out in public, afraid of getting into trouble with the police because of his slurred speech and memory problems and aware that others may draw negative conclusions about him. In finding a new peer group of marginalized others, he has transformed his disability into an opportunity to prove himself as a good person. It is worth noting that Declan, who was white but whose stigma was visible during social interactions, found acceptance within intersecting stigmatized groups, including members of LGBTQ community, those living with AIDS, and Black individuals.
Conclusion and Discussion
This study features examples of men who manage racial-criminal stigma using redemption bids and redemptive generativity. Redemption bids are temporary but nonetheless meaningful interactional opportunities to construct counternarratives of Black and brown men, while redemptive generativity relies on longer projects focused on selflessness, giving back to one’s family and community and assisting vulnerable groups or the next generation. The credible performance of redemption, conducted before an audience and resulting in positive appraisals, supports the construction of a positive adult masculine identity in the face of stigma.
We extend prior research and theory from the subfield of desistance (Maruna, 2001; Stone, 2016) and find that these counternarratives are also present among those who terminated their criminal activity many years ago or had no such histories. Just as men of color consciously signal their lack of ill intent to passersby by not walking too close to women or crossing the street (Anderson, 1999), many of these same men are engaged in generative activities to signal to others, and ultimately themselves, that they are not bad people, despite how society sees them.
Although some men in our sample described experiencing other forms of stigma based on disability, addiction, or homelessness, the nature of racial stigma is categorically different. It casts its reach over an entire class of persons, regardless of their behavior or moral character. Racial stigma presumes guilt denies its targets’ very right to exist, to human dignity or citizenship. It can be sneaky, allowing those with social class status markers to feel that they can move freely around white spaces until that privilege is suddenly rescinded (Anderson 2011). And it is experienced vicariously, for example, when racist incidents are circulated on social media and viewers are reminded of their tenuous social positions (Cohen et al., 2021).
We speculate that redemption, then, may not only be taken on behalf of the self, but also on behalf of the entire racial group to which inferior attributes are applied. In The Chosen Ones, Jones (2018) argues that the redemption of Black men is a social activity. We agree and go a step further to suggest that it may also be a collective activity. When the Frankford men detailed their generative activities and made bids to being of good moral character, they seemed to be consciously crafting a redemption narrative for all Black men (the reader may remember how important David thought it was to share positive narratives of Black men, “so they [outsiders] see us.”) The power of group-based stigma is that it applies to all, so one man’s counter-narrative has the potential to call into question the entire characterization of their race and gender. Additional research could more systematically explore this hypothesis.
This study has several limitations. The Frankford men are operating within a community selected as an “ideal type” of social space because its high concentration of persons flowing in and out of the community from jails and prisons and large number of halfway houses and recovery programs. It is possible that the redemptive generativity seen here among men of color is unique to a social context in which so many residents present needs related to reentry and addiction and because opportunities abound for concerned neighbors to support them. Our sample does not include women, so we are unable to document whether and how racial-criminal stigma is salient for this group. Moreover, we take care not to make too much of racial comparisons, since our sample of white men was disproportionately drawn from the recovery community. Finally, we do not address fatherhood as an important form of generativity, although prior research has identified fathering activities as an important means of positive masculinity construction for Black men (Caldwell & White, 2006).
Given the primacy of social interaction in the process of generative redemption and its apparent positive effects on men managing racial-criminal stigma—and presumably those who benefit from their care and generosity—it is worthwhile to consider how these social ties can be fostered. The credible messenger movement has potential to transform informal mentoring and volunteer opportunities into paid (and thereby visibly valued) work that builds on shared experiences and supports positive masculine identities for men of color. Early evaluations of this approach have demonstrated positive effects on mentees (Harvell et al., 2018), although additional research should focus on unique benefits to mentors. Policies prohibiting contact between system-involved individuals or discouraging use of public space through aggressive policing (Fader, 2021) may be reconsidered in light of the importance of community roles for these men.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
