White guys can’t dance. Black athletes are naturally better at sports. White people don’t sing the blues the way they should be sung. Black folks have “rhythm.” White people can’t rap. Black men are much more prodigiously endowed.

Scott Poulson-Bryant says the black-man-with-large-member myth isn’t necessarily so. In his new book “Hung: A Meditation on the Measure of Black Men in America,” he examines the rumors, the truth, and how and why the sexuality of black men has become so mythologized.

All African Americans — and most whites — are familiar with the famous snapshots of lynched black men hanging from trees, surrounded by leering, grinning white townspeople. Poulson-Bryant points out that, at times in American history, lynching was a twisted form of entertainment. During the time of Jim Crow laws, they were advertised in the local paper as community events. Lying, stealing, even merely looking at a white woman was justification for an attack on a black man.

Poulson-Bryant says that an element of sex was usually included in the “reason.” Those men were hung for being hung, swinging from trees because of what was supposedly swinging in their pants.

As a college student, Poulson-Bryant began to think about how black men measure up. One night, a white girl took him back to her apartment for sex, under the incorrect assumption that he was “bigger” because he was black. After being “White-Girl-ed,” Poulson-Bryant remembered something his cousin had said when they were children: if a man is small, he’s not a man.

SO, BLACK, WHITE, or Asian, how does a man know whether or not he “measures up?” Scientifically, Poulson-Bryant cites the Journal of Research in Personality that found Asian men to be slightly smaller than white men, who are slightly smaller than black men in size. Poulson-Bryant tells the story of one of his gay friends who, despite his inability to “perform” one particular night, was asked to stay at a party because of his physical attributes. This makes him wonder if James Baldwin was correct when he wrote “its color was its size”.

Which leads to the big question: Does size truly matter? It appears that most men want to be able to brag about their own bigger-is-better, but most women who are interviewed agreed that size isn’t important, as long as a man knows what to do with it.

One gay model-cum-hustler said that smaller was better. Interestingly enough, Poulson-Bryant talked to at least one black man who says that his extra-large endowment is an embarrassment, one that he takes care to hide in the locker room.

By weaving history, culture, film, music, and sports in with personal stories and observations from women and men both gay and straight, Poulson-Bryant, a founding editor of Vibe magazine and successful music journalist, turns this myth into quite an astonishing book. He isn’t afraid to expose himself in more ways than one, and his wit and honesty only amplify the subject matter.

This is cache, read story here