If I am being candid, I can attest personally to the fact that in many schools, the only abundance of black men comes in the form of custodians, food-service employees, and transportation workers. In addition, in conversations with my colleagues, it is widely understood that if black men are educators, they more often than not are physical education teachers or coach in some capacity. Black men are largely underrepresented in our nation’s classrooms; it has been widely reported that they make up less than 2 percent of our country’s teachers.
Fit. According to recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics, nearly 82 percent of public school teachers in school year 2011-12 were white. When black men first enter the classroom, there is a high likelihood that they may be only one of maybe two or three black males on the staff, even in some predominantly black schools and districts. When hiring decisions are made within a school, they largely depend on “fit”: Will this person fit in at our school, and how well? Needless to say, adding a black man to the staff will automatically change a school’s dynamics.