Silence and resistance: representations of Black men and masculinities in the UK House of Commons 1979–2019

How are Black men and masculinities represented within parliamentary debates, by whom, and with what effects? To address these questions, we conduct a quantitative and qualitative textual analysis of an original dataset of speeches mentioning Black men in UK House of Commons debates between 1979 and 2019. Bringing together existing research on the political representation of marginalized groups and scholarship on representations of Black masculinities, we find that Black men are rendered both invisible and hyper-visible within parliamentary debates. The silence regarding Black men in this context is deafening. They are rarely explicitly mentioned, and when they are it is primarily in relation to a narrow set of specific events. Our quantitative analysis shows that Black MPs are far more likely than others to constitute Black men, while our qualitative analysis shows that Black MPs employ specific strategies to resist this and (re)constitute Black men in alternative ways. In addressing these questions, we improve understanding of the relationship between constitutive and substantive representation, as well as the significance and multiple meanings of representative silences. More broadly, we argue that political science scholarship must take seriously the challenges that Black feminist theory poses to theories of representation.