https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004211026893 Qualitative Inquiry 2021, Vol. 27(10) 1159–1168 © The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/10778004211026893 journals.sagepub.com/home/qix Special Issue: Racisms in Qualitative Inquiry: Recognitions and challenges Introduction It is safe to argue that no other racial or gender group has been imagined and studied more deeply in American social science than the African American 1 male. Since the advent of this field, Black males’ physical features, belief systems, and social habits have been examined extensively in the domain of academic thought. The history of the study of African American males in social science has two central features. The first is the conceptualization of Black men and boys, who in general have not been studied through surveys or qualitative data but through existing perceptions about their social and cultural habits. Some social scientists have conjured up complete fictions about Black male life, while others have made observations and drawn conclusions by piecing together bits of American Black male culture as rep- resentative of Black males’ total experience of social loca- tion. The two approaches have made different theoretical assertions to explain Black males’ lives, both with little or no data to support them. The second feature of social sci- ence research on African American males is observation and interviews. Relying largely on qualitative research methodologies, the intent of this research is either to con- firm what already has been conceptualized about Black males or to offer a new way to make sense of their life experiences. These qualitative conceptualizations of Black males have occurred within principled systems of understanding, or epistemes (Foucault, 2005), which differ according to time and space. In this article, I focus on four periods of qualitative description: the ethnological discourse of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the early- to mid-20th-cen- tury social science literature, studies published from the 1950s to the 1970s, and scholarship from the 1980s to the present. I argue that, as Black males entered into new sys- tems of reasoning, the Black male body was examined in different ways. In exploring this social science history, I seek a new way to examine Black males in schools and society. I will show that, whether drawing from flat stereo- typical narratives or seeking to expand the conceptual meaning of Black males’ lives, the social science literature is constrained by an overarching racial narrative. In other words, whether qualitative description reproduces old ste- reotypes or creates counter-stories, Black male personhood has remained defined by a master narrative of “problem.” I conclude this article by arguing for a different approach to qualitative descriptions of Black males that move beyond recycled stories or counter-narratives and on to explore the unimaginable. 1026893QIX XX X 10.1177/10778004211026893Qualitative InquiryBrown research-article 2021 1 The University of Texas at Austin, USA Corresponding Author: Anthony L. Brown, The University of Texas at Austin, 912 Speedway Stop D5700 Austin, TX 78712-1293, USA. Email: anthony_brown@utexas.edu Qualitative Description and Black Males: On Race, the Body, and Researching the Unimaginable Anthony L. Brown 1 Abstract In this article, I explore how race and the body are central to social and education research on Black males. The guiding question of this essay is, How has the Black male body been conceptualized over time through qualitative description? I argue that, as Black males entered into new systems of reasoning, the Black male body was examined in different ways. Drawing from Sylvia Wynter’s concept of subjective understanding and David Theo Goldberg’s concept of racial knowledge, I explore the temporal and spatial meaning of qualitative description in the context of African American males. I conclude this essay by arguing for a different approach to qualitative description of Black males that moves beyond recycled stories of deficits or counter-narratives and on to explore the unimaginable. Keywords African American studies, ethnicity and race, critical race theory, discourse, politics and culture