“An Air of Expectancyâ€

This qualitative study explores formations of masculinity among students at a historically black all-male college, offering insights into how the institution crafts the manhood of its students in accordance with gender and class ideologies about black male respectability, heteronormativity, and male hegemony. While a plethora of studies on poverty, deviance, and marginalization have highlighted black men “in crisis,†this article examines middle-class black men and explores sites of conflict and difference for this latter group. Three critical insights into middle-class black masculinity are revealed by this approach: first, that men are institutionally “branded†through class and gender ideologies; second, that the exceptionality of high-achieving black men is politicized to endorse class conflict with other black men; and finally, that sexuality and class performances are inseparably linked through men’s sexual consumption of black women.