Citation

Metzl JM. Am. J. Men. Health 2013; 7(4 Suppl): 68S-72S.

Affiliation

1Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1557988313486512

PMID

23649169

Abstract

African American men's health is often discussed through the language of imperatives. African American men suffer disproportionately from certain ill-health outcomes, such logic often implies because they live harder and drive faster, or because they fail to visit physicians. These statements may well be true in certain settings. But connections between African American men and health are far more complicated than they may once have seemed. We now recognize that notions of "health" attained by individual choice-embedded in the notion that African American men should visit doctors or engage in fewer risky behaviors-are at times in tension with larger cultural, economic, and political notions of "health." This is because men's health, in general, and black men's health, in particular, is a desired state, but it is also a prescribed state that tells us as much about American social hierarchies and political economies as it does about individual behaviors.

Language: en