This study on masculine culture is currently available in print, along with a handful of associated articles, for those who might wish to own a physical copy. If you have missed it, or are new to the site, here is a reposting of 2014's biggest article.

If you were one of the participants and would like your own copy of the Inquest click on the link below for the print edition.

For the past two years I have been socializing with a number of black men from the generation ahead of me. These men average 60 years of age, all have a background in scholastic sports, most have university degrees, and half currently coach sports. One is a cop, and I try not to hold it against him. I have spilled a lot of ink—well, it is spraying toner now—writing about my interactions with young urban black men of the two generations behind me, largely for a white suburban and rural readership which tends toward those two age groups.

I have gone on record as describing myself as ‘the last black man in Baltimore’ to the howls of disapproval of liberal whites. I say this largely because I now behave, in my ‘reverse retirement mindset’ very much like the defiant twenty-something black man of 1975—never mind that I’m a 51 year old cracker looking at the yawning cultural chasm of 2015.

Oddly enough my black fighters didn’t seem to mind this claim, as I remind them of their uncles from the 1960s and 1970s; who came of age when it was police policy to beat the shit out of random black men just to set a certain tone; who reached maturity in an age when young black men needed to compete in sports just to get a decent education; who actually lived much of the inequity that the young black hoodlums and hood rats of today claim as their burden; though it is nothing to them but a vast cow of displaced guilt to be milked.

Over the past year I have listened and watched, and talked a little, to the last generation of black men in this city that deserve to be called Men, just as the last generation of white men that was collectively worth the masculine honorific came of age in the 1950s.

Blacks entered mainstream American consumer life [which did not begin in earnest until after WWII] a generation later than whites, so seem to be that far behind in the process of emasculation. In the 1990s white bots [that is a typo but I’m keeping it] started staying home into middle age living off of mom as they played video games. Now black boys are accelerating the process by living off their baby’s mom.

So, before they are extinct how do real men interact, just in case the feminists and angry man children out there are curious?

I will use Jack Donovan’s Way of Men ‘The Primitive Math Of Violence’ as a field handbook. God only knows that I am at enough of a disadvantage without a degree in sociology or anthropology. The last thing I need to do is compound that by using a guide written by some liberal babysitting drone or feminist mantrap.

In his seminal work Jack defined 4 masculine traits that define men for men, and by which men rate each other in the primal meat-ripping way of life, and hopefully might again someday after the Momocracy fails due to a facelift gone wrong or some other cosmetic disaster:

1. Strength

2. Courage

3. Mastery

4. Honor

It goes without saying that you don’t achieve #4 without a good score in at least one of the three prerequisites. I will use this guide in my attempt to decode the various ‘inquests’ that constitute the ongoing manhood rites I have witnessed at the Mixed Race Sports Bar.

Note: Mainstream postmodern America only regards Mastery as a virtue. Strength is regarded as an unfair advantage of men over otherwise equal women, Courage as stupidity, and a vigorously applied sense of Honor as insanity. In street parlance, postmodern life is all about being slick, about being the smart person who games the system. A single virtue value system such as this is what you get when a materialistic society evolves to its apex.

The bar is a masculine matrix. Women tend bar, and sometimes come as the guests of men. Sometimes they come alone or in pairs, to meet men. The minority white clientele are all smokers and sit by the front door. They are mostly working class and mostly uneducated, with even a reading of the sports page beyond their ken.

The majority black clientele of this white owned bar—which was founded by a pro football player who my Uncle Fred used to coach in college—do not smoke and favor the back of the bar as it gives easy access to the pool tables and is a better venue for conversation as there are three seating angles.

Although the median age is 55, a few young men—both white and black—congregate around the poker machines in the late afternoon.

For people such as myself who rent rooms, or for married men who need a break from the job or the wife, this is a nice place to meet for socializing. The conversation is commonly centered on sports, with an expert on every stool. This is the best thing about sports in this country, is that it provides a common ground for people of different races to converse passionately without acrimony.

However, once one gets beyond sports, there is no conversing with the whites, who generally drink for effect and read little. The few literary minded whites who frequent the bar sit with the blacks. Two of these men [William and Quinn] tackle annual reading lists. To a person like myself or Quinn who rent rooms, the bar provides a common space for reading, and for other men an escape from the banal bleating of women.

This past Tuesday night as I stood along the rail wall reading Quinn’s newsletter, which he photocopies and passes out for free at Church, work [he is a physical education teacher at City College], the barber shop, and the bar, a woman walked in. As she noticed Quinn passing a newsletter to one of the manual labor class of black men who come here after work to hang out with the more educated men, she looked at the document and said, “Oh, somebody done died?”

Quinn scrunched his brows into a scowl of disdain as he explained it was a newsletter, and this ghetto representative went on her way, apparently not having seen a non glossy document with a photocopy of a man in a basketball uniform [LaBron James] that was not a homemade funeral program honoring a young man having met an untimely end.

The man—seemingly a construction worker by his hands and clothes—gladly accepted the latest edition of Quinn’s sports newsletter and bought Quinn a drink. Quinn said, “You didn’t have to do that, the newsletter is free.”

The man responded, “Sure I do. I come here because of you. If you didn’t come here this wouldn’t be a bar, but just a place where people drink.”

Quinn seemed shocked, so I targeted him for a review when he would be deep into his cups so that I might better help him, for Hawk had assigned me the task of rehabilitating Quinn in the wake of the disastrous ‘GQ Mugging Inquest’ of which he was the subject.

It was a Saturday night about a 18 months ago, perhaps 8:00 p.m. the whites upfront where staggering out drunk—all except the giant bearded hillbilly—and the remaining patrons were sitting for the Floyd Money Inquest. I had yet to speak with any of these men. I did note with a sense of good will that as the drunken whites left two of the larger older black men were offering to walk them home in the wake of all of the black youth muggings over the preceding months. I was sure now, as I stood along the side wall, that I had chosen the best place to study urban culture, as most of the patrons do not drink for effect as did those of the other neighborhood bars, all of which also proved to be highly segregated.

On my side of the bar sat a shrill, stocky man with his wife, shouting the praises of welterweight champ Floyd Money, of his ‘gangster manipulation’ of the Black versus Latino boxing race politics, and his ‘non-losing’ perfect record preserving method of boxing.

In most such inquests the entire bar gangs up on the off opinion in a kind of test, a rite of masculinity. These conversations, if had by whites, would involve two debating teams, or two debaters and two cheering sessions. These men, however, conduct themselves more like rich 19th Century white aristocrats, with the odd man expected to defend his unpopular opinion against all comers, like Richard F. Burton defiantly expounding on his gnostic vision of God against a room full of Anglican snobs.

However, in this inquest, there was a lead prosecutor, a dark slouch-shouldered man with cannonball biceps and a bowling ball dome of a head who had the look of a boxer, and by the tone with which he disparaged Floyd Money for being ‘nothing but a run and hug chump’ was once a fighter who had chased more than one ‘point scoring coward’ around the ring.

This Floyd Money Inquest reached the level of anger, as the former boxer finally dismissed the Floyd Money advocate for ‘getting all caught up in the money and popularity bullshit’ and forgetting what ‘a boxer was supposed to be—a fighter, a man who brings it!’

I approached the former boxer with a series of notes on the back of a business card concerning some old time fighters who are generally overlooked. He was fascinated, quizzed me on my boxing background, and when he found out I was a writer and a coach, told me not to miss an opportunity to speak on ‘the sweet science’ any time I was in.

This man goes by the name of Hawk, and seems to be the most respected man in the bar by a long shot, often serving as the judge of disputes and the lead prosecutor at formal inquests. He is the only patron I have seen tell other patrons that they had had too much to drink and need to moderate their behavior. Hawk has a warm body check handshake, meant to check your muscle tone and balance as much as a welcome, passes up few opportunities to buy me a drink, and tends to nominate me as a walking sourcebook.

This past winter, the tall deep voiced patron, who stops in irregularly and is a ringer for Michael Jordan, was conducting an inquest of a very defensive Subject. This other man was timid, and bookish in a physical sense, but was fiercely argumentative. He had made a point on pronouncing a word and the tall Inquisitor called into question his ‘blackness’ making sure to turn and apologize to me for “getting racial up in here. But this shit is serious.”

This point had to do with ‘blackness’ or being ‘a real black man’ being contingent on growing up poor, and hard, and preferably in the South, and knowing a life of austerity alien to the young African Americans of today. Finally, as the tall dark Inquisitor had the pretentious little man reeling before the men who seconded his every point and looked askance at the Subject, he swooped in for the kill.

“Everyone that came up hard knows you ain’t a real black man unless you’ve eaten a mayonnaise sandwich! Now tell me you’ve eaten a mayo sandwich!”

The Subject nervously took a sip of beer and looked to all sides with darting eyes as the Inquisitor took a real black man roll call.

“Any man here that has eaten a mayo sandwich raise your hand!”

One by one, as the man who had been found wanting squinted and frowned, the hands were raised. Finally in his defense, as all hands but his were raised, he said, “Yeah, but half of ya’all probably ate Helmans or Kraft at least. My mother bought that store brand stuff!”

The tall Inquisitor leaned back on his stool and rocked from side to side, racking his mind for the off brand mayo of his youth. “I know the label. It had this beige color and black lettering—with the name in red. It was some shit, the cruddiest shit you eva ate. I jus’ cain’t remember the brand.”

The Subject was coming back, bouncing off of the ropes of rejection. “That’s because you but visited your mamma probably but once a year to go to the beach and sat yourself up in some cushy joint up here!”

I tapped the towering Inquisitor on his shoulder. “Sauers, the brand is Sauers, was being shipped out of a Richmond warehouse up until a few years ago.”

The Inquisitor slapped me on the back. “My man!” and turned with venom on the Subject, “And that Helmans and Kraft shit proves you ain’t from the South. The good mayo down there was named something else entirely,” he said as he turned to me, and I placed the Stake into the Northern Boy’s Fortunate heart, “Dukes, Dukes is the high end Southern mayonnaise.”

If a patron in this bar used to be a card carrying member of the Black Panthers, it would have to be William. William was my source for the article On The Steps. William sometimes wears a vest, and various very cool slouch hats and berets. He would have been a middle weight in his youth, is a small heavyweight now, and keeps a neatly trimmed beard and mustache. He walks with more confidence than any man in the bar, and I have seen him stay late into the night playing pool with young guys from West Baltimore. William has a lot of vested masculinity, and would flash angry eyes at anyone who would question his physicality. He makes no effort to leave with another man, as this is the type of practical herd instinct favored by women and whites for protection against the predators of the night. William and I are a lot alike, though he has a more assertive personality.

William always brings reading material and seems to be in a contest with Quinn over how many books a year they read. William will be quick to disparage light reading, favoring classics, including Faulkner. My first meeting with William was when I was drinking with a young lady and he came over and gave me the ‘sissy white boy test’ and said good naturedly enough, “You know that is my wife you are sitting with.”

To react with anger would show a lack of confidence in my Mastery.

To reacted apologetically would show a lack of Courage.

To flinch and not immediately comeback with something would show a lack of my own regard for my physical Strength.

Having passed many such tests in the past, I responded, “In that case, I’ll give her back as soon as I’m finished with her.”

He laughed and slapped me on the back and walked off with a smile. The lady said, “How come they always expect whites to be afraid of them.”

“Because most whites are afraid of blacks. The one thing about these older black guys is they want to interact with someone who is worth their time. There are a lot of tests they put each other through. In a white man what they despise is cowardice and stupidity. He was making sure that I wasn’t just sitting back here because it was packed up front. He’s halfway to considering me a white guy worth knowing. As soon as I bring a book in here, and he asks to see it and then starts quizzing me about the content, then I will have passed his test as a man.”

“Men are weird!” she said.

William eventually quizzed me about every book he saw me read. I have seen him tutoring a few adult victims of public education on reading and content retention and on ‘grasping the subtext.’ So, William is like a cross between Quinn and Hawk, mixing two types of men that less educated or less experienced fellows admire, which makes him something of a lightning rod at times.

The cop, whose name slips me, who is like William a football coach, once put William on the stand in front of three other patrons, and in his strident tone accused the Subject, “You mean to tell me that you would not take a young piece of pussy just because you were married.”

“No I would not,” said William in his soft tone.

“Bullshit! We were designed to want that pussy. Ain’t no old ass man goin’ to tell me that if a young piece of pussy come at him, that he is not going to be all over that.”

“That may be your debased perspective, but I do not share it.”

“Brother, you are full of shit. If a sweet young thing puts that strange coochy up on the table for you, you will not resist it—you are not designed to!”

“I have passed your test brother, and I will again, for the young women still desire me, as I am a man of substance.”

That suave line brought a cussing fit from the cop, which is essentially an acknowledgment of defeat.

When the riots in Fergusson Missouri erupted I noticed a black couple sitting next to the whites. She pointed at the TV in anger and he ‘shushed’ her not wanting to discuss racial politics in mixed company. Thinking this night would be a rare opportunity to observe a racial politics discussion I returned when the whites had drifted mostly off and the back of the bar was well stocked with men of this manly circle. I was speaking with Hawk about old time boxers.

The men all agreed with the liberal media that the shooting of Tiny Teen by a white cop was a bad thing, with two exceptions: Hawk blew it off as ‘some knucklehead bullshit,’ and the cop, made the case for police in general, who are attacked by young men at an increasingly frequent rate. He said, “Look, we fear for our lives too. All we ask is that when we try to arrest you, that you don’t do no stupid shit. Your goddamned lawyer is gonna’ get your shit thrown out a court on Monday anyhow!”

William rose to accept the bait that had been so shrilly laid before him and declared, “If I am not wrong, I will not be arrested—will not stand for it.”

“Is you stupid or crazy? You mean to tell me you gonna fight a cop?”

“If I am in the right, I will fight.”

The cop just shook his head as if to say, “This man is going to get himself shot one day.”

Quinn rose up as Assistant Inquisitor and said, “So, what are you, Black Superman—bullets bouncing off your chest? Are you crazy man?”

William opened his hands like Sitting Bull waiting for the Indian police to come murder him, amid the bemused laughter that greeted Quinn’s real politic statement, “Characterize it as you will.”

Quinn is a phys ed. teacher and tennis coach who publishes his own gratis newsletter THE BASELINE SPORTSPAGE under his TWENTY 5 PRODUCTIONS imprint. The content for the November 2014 issue includes an opinion piece on Ray Rice and the NFL spousal abuse scandals, two articles on the Baltimore Orioles baseball team, the feature on LeBron James’ return to Ohio, and ‘Dressing for Success: a look at the sartorial tastes on the tube,’ in which he discusses men’s fashion.

Below are some quotes from this 24 page zine

On Ray Rice: “Pretending that he never existed is equally offensive as what he did.”

On Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder resisting NFL pressure to rename the team to appease Native American feminists from tribes alien to the Potomac Watershed, whose men would have gladly scalped their ancestors: “Not being a Skins fan I have no dog in this fight. But there is a part of me that says leave the name as it is. The Redskins emblem does not show a degrading image as its symbol.”

Quinn told me a story about standing up to his father when he was a 195 pound college athlete. His father was a stern figure, so Quinn’s nerves failed him and he grabbed a baseball bat defensively. This is how Quinn described the encounter as ending:

“He comes into my room and says, ‘Are you going to hit me with that bat?’

“I said, ‘Not unless you tell me to sir.’”

“That was my father. Kids today—by law—can’t get that kind of schooling. Every guy I know has a story about standing up to his father, usually when he is around sixteen. It usually doesn’t go to well. These were real men, not some absentee sperm donator. My favorite was my one friend who said he stood up to his dad—actually raised his hands to his father in the kitchen. His father could have punched him out—he’s a grown ass man after all. But what he did was far better. He grabbed him by the hips and set him up on the refrigerator, and just went to bed.”

So, that is a little about Quinn, the subject of the most Brutal Manly Inquest to be conducted at the Mixed Race Sports Bar.

One Saturday afternoon I sat at the back corner of the long side of the bar with a lady to my right. Hawk sat three stools down on the long side. Two men closer to my age, who had played college basketball, sat between us. On the end, to my left, was an empty stool.

In walked Quinn in a suit and tie and an issue of Gentleman’s Quarterly under his arm, in place of his typical coaching suit and tennis racquet case. I complimented Quinn as he asked me if I read GQ, touting it as a journal of note, and the tough white broad next to me whispered in my ear, “What the fuck, is that Cosmopolitan for Men, or what?”

Then Hawk chimed in, “We got a reckoning muthafuca!”

Quinn stood at momentary attention, having been called to account by the man’s man in the bar like Fletcher Christian standing for a dressing down by William Bligh on the deck of The H.M.S. Bounty.

“What did I do?” he said to me out of the side of his mouth.

Hawk jumped on him with vitriol, “Muthafuca, don’t be talkin’ ta Jimmy unless you asking for a boxing lesson. Lord knows you never thrown a punch in your life. We need to settle this shit right here.”

As the GQ Mugging Inquest got formerly underway the assembled jury nodded in agreement that it was good day to run a well-dressed man through the manly gantlet. I commented to Quinn, “If that’s what happens when you walk in here dressed like that, I’m glad I threw out all my ties when I retired.”

Quinn absently straightened the knot of his tie as he sat for his grilling and said to me as he met his Inquisitor’s glare, “I know what this is about. Just because a man is well-dressed does not make him less of a man.”

Hawk directed his attention to me, but his accusatory finger toward the Subject of the inquest at my side. “Jimmy, you know we got this stuff going on with these hoodlums in the neighborhood. So I look out. As I’m driving down the road the other day, there’s Quinn, strolling along—tennis racquet and all, not a care in the world—got his self a little buzz on.”

Quinn attempts to interject a point and Hawk’s girl raises up from behind him [This, the tolerance of a female opinion on the Inquisitor’s side, means that this was a manly issue of some gravity, like when the Tuaregs let their women torture French Foreign Legionnaires.] and shouts him down, “It ain’t your turn!”

Quinn says tensely from the corner of his mouth, “Good Lord, we have Johnny Cochrane in drag up in here.”

Hawk continues, “Now little does this GQ here know that three hoodlums got him in their sights.”

Quinn rises to object and is shouted down by the lady, “Wait your turn Tennis Racquet.”

Quinn sits down and groans, "Good Lord it’s on now. I need a drink.”

Hawk goes on, “Well Jimmy, I swerve over and get into the ramming lane—figure I’ll clip one of these young hoppers but he bolts—spry as an alley cat up onto the curb. I stop and get out, ready to level another—I figure it’s his responsibility to take out the third one. It is his mugging after all.”

Quinn rises to make an objection and gets the hand from Hawk, “Muthafuca, don’ even start on that ‘Oh, I was loosening my racquet to take care of business’ bullshit.”

Quinn sat down with a groan, “Please just tell me when it’s my turn.”

I patted him on the shoulder seam of the well-tailored suit jacket and Hawk turned the Hand of Sit Down and Shut up into the pointed Finger of Accusation, and addressed me, “I’m tellin’ you Jimmy, the man did not see it commin’ and he should own up to it.”

Quinn then stood and addressed the Inquisitor, “I’m not saying I saw them, or that I’m not grateful to you, just that I had a sense—”

Hawk dismissed his plea like a secular judge would dismiss a defendant’s claim to ‘ignorance of the law’ with a sadly shaken head, unleashing the female terror at his side, who rose and pronounced sentence, “The glove don’t fit!”

Hawk shook his head sadly as he bought me a drink and his lady shouted down Quinn, who, like the subject of the Mayo Sandwich Inquest, had been found wanting in some way, but was being made to feel it in a less convivial manner. As Quinn groaned Hawk whispered, “Jimmy, what am I going to do with him? He just don’t get it.”

Quinn and I had a conversation about self-defense and avoidance tactics, which was why Hawk chose this moment to basically detail me to discuss street survival with his least ‘street-minded’ friend. The GQ magazine and the suit screamed ‘Mug me, I might as well be white’. This impression was apparent to all but Quinn.

Like with the Floyd Money’ Inquest, Hawk is very critical of men who focus more on Mastery than the basics of Strength and Courage. This was the subtext that was not brought up, as this inquest was intended to have some fun shocking Quinn into being more singular in his approach to avoidance. If this had been an attempt to embarrass him, which it was not, Hawk would have brought up the fact that Quinn makes it a habit [very sensible from a white perspective] of timing his leaving the bar with a friend who happens to be leaving in a car so he can get a lift home. Quinn had recently confided in me how nervous he was about these youths hunting him and others on the street. Hawk wants Quinn to eat the ‘mayo sandwich’ of street survival and develop a grit and cageyness that he regards as a necessity.

I see much of modern media ‘reporting’ and political activism, from both the dominant Left and the reactionary Right, as a litany of divisive measures intended to keep men separated into warring camps in support of the various fears foisted upon our women by politicians and journalist. The most obvious attempt is the NFL’s media witch hunt against any black man who might want to set his son up on the refrigerator.

I have had much negative to say about sports as a diversionary device to keep the populous compliantly distracted Bread And Circuses. But the strength of sports in terms of keeping men together is that sports is one of the few areas where men of different racial and ethnic and political backgrounds can find common cause. The men in the bar I have described do not just discuss sports, but use sports as a means of discussing what is more important. In my crackpot opinion, what American men need is more mixed race sports bars where the feminist agenda of transforming every man except for active duty war fighters and cops into a quivering ‘mangina’ will find little traction.

There was a time when the word ‘Sport’ described a fellow who belonged to a classless and raceless society known as ‘the sporting set’ and before that in Britain as ‘the fancy’. This 19th Century phenomenon was a reaction by poor men and the old land owning class to the new order or the world that was based on nothing but money, the rule of the industrialist and the businessman, and his risk-averse womanly concerns with posh comforts and monetary gain at the expense of anything and everything. I’d like to close out this writing year with a suggestion that a return of ‘sportsmanship’ in a role wider than that applied to athletic behavior might go a long way toward slowing the cultural rot around us.