The black male teacher shortage:
If there is no solution, is there, in fact, a problem?

In the 1950s and 1960s, when schools were first being desegregated, opponents of desegregation used to say, “Black kids can’t learn from white teachers.”  The political correctness of the time called that a lie.  From roughly 2000 forward, however, there have been reports, one after another, to the effect that black male students in particular fare better under black male teachers.

If that’s a fact, it displeases me.  It suggests that because I am white, my presence in the classroom was comparatively disadvantageous to the very children I most wanted to bless.  It suggests that there’s nothing any white person can do to improve education for blacks.

Is it a fact?

Most of the articles I link to below, say so.

It is said that black boys achieve more, and behave better, under black male teachers.  It even matters what college the black male teacher came from:  black male teachers who attended historically black colleges or universities (HBCUs) advantage their black male students comparatively more than black male teachers who did not.

As to the behavioral question — the actual statement is to the effect that they’re punished less often.  On the one hand, the politically correct narrative about this has always been that black boys are punished more often, and more harshly, than other children, for the exact same behaviors; and that all children of all types engage in those behaviors with equal frequency.  There appears to me to be a specific lack of data to support that last aspect.  On the other hand, it may be that black male teachers tolerate, or manage, certain kinds of behavior better than their white peers do.  Willful defiance might be one category of conduct as to which this is so; and if so, that could be because black people are more accepting of willful defiance than are whites.  Either way, there may be classroom management principles white teachers would do well to learn from their black peers.

As to the notion of a black male teacher “shortage,” nationwide, 7-8% of all teachers are black, and 2% black males.  Meanwhile, though none of the articles I link to here specifically tells the proportion of black public school students nationwide, if I recall correctly, that portion is more than 50%.  So though black males represent only 2% of teachers, they represent 25% or more of students.  Parity will require increasing the proportion of black male teachers by 1,000%.

The conundrum

In the long run, bringing the numbers of black male teachers into parity with the numbers of white teachers and of black male students, depends on correcting a number of underlying disparities; and frankly, I despair that it will ever occur:

• Proportionately fewer black children than white children graduate high school.
• Of high school graduates, proportionately fewer blacks than whites gain college admission.
• Of college students, proportinately fewer blacks than whites complete their degrees.
• Of black college graduates, thanks to the pressures of the diversity movement and affirmative action, there is tremendous competition among all professions to recruit these individuals, so that education may be a less attractive profession than others, that may pay more for the same skill set and possibly be easier to work in.

A comparison to my church

In 1978, I began attending a church destined to belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).  At the time, this previously all-white congregation had thrived in an upper-middle-class, all-white community of stable families.  Over the years, the neighborhood changed, and was now composed primarily of lower-middle-class, transient black renters.  The congregation stated a specific intent to become inclusive of these people; and given my own concerns for racial justice, that was a principal reason I joined.  Once I came into leadership, I saw that things were not at all as they had seemed from the pew.  Vestry meetings were often like war.  One group was progressive and intent on inclusion; another group was intent on obstruction.  The latter feared that inclusion would mean our worship became like that described in “They weren’t ready for white people.”  And a few people actually wanted that.

The struggle went on for twenty years.

From its inception, the ELCA — which was initially something like one-third of one percent black — adopted one goal for racial inclusivity after another that, based on my personal experience, struck me as hopelessly naive.  One was that the church would become 10% black within 10 years — 1,000% growth.  These commitments seemed to me to ignore the geographic and historical realities of the denomination.

In 1978, there were seventeen Lutheran churches within a one-mile radius of my own.  This reflects the history of Lutheranism in the United States:  different immigrant enclaves brought their own cultures from northern Europe and formed their own churches; the Danes, Swedes, Norwegians and Germans all each kept to themselves, and never interacted with each other.

Outreach across ethnic boundaries was inconceivable.

Outreach itself was almost inconceivable.

In the state churches from which these folk all came, there was no need or point in outreach.  If you were born Swedish or Danish or German or Norwegian, you would be baptized into the Lutheran state church, and you would believe whatever Pastor told you to.  In contast to your Methodist and Baptist neighbors, you would generally not discuss religion outside of church; in particular, the powerful “orthodox” wing of Lutheranism discouraged theological reflection among the laity, lest anyone entertain a heretical idea.

That history militates against the evangelization of black people.

Geography militates against it also.

These all-white enclaves and churches existed in all-white residential areas, often rural or semi-rural, literally out of reach of black folk.  Members would have to travel distances to even meet black folk on a Sunday, and vice versa.

And except for those urban congregations like my own, the question would then rise:  why would any black person want to attend a white church, or a church with a white pastor?

So the ELCA’s inclusivity goals have largely gone unmet; and I anticipate no difference for the goal of increasing the ratio of black male teachers 1,000%.  Not in my time, or yours, either.

Some facts I do like.  My congregation today is vibrant, vital, and wholly engaged in community ministry.  We have between 40 and 60 present any Sunday, and we welcome whoever walks in the door.  I did not know until I was told, that we are now more than 75% black.  When I assist in leading worship, when I stand down front looking out at the congregation, I do not see black and white people.  I see loved ones.

12/01/22 — Nick Valencia, Mary Lin Elementary School in Atlanta under federal investigation after allegations principal assigned Black students to classes based on race | CNN

12/05/22 — Char Adams, Advocates say increasing Black teachers should be a national concern (nbcnews.com)

12/08/22 — Rowhea Elmesky and Olivia Marcucci, White teachers often talk about Black students in racially coded ways (theconversation.com)

12/10/22 — Sara Balanta, Solving The Black Male Educator Shortage – The 74 (the74million.org)

02/16/23 — Paul L. Morgan and Eric Hengyu Yu, Do elementary school students do better when taught by teachers of the same race or ethnicity? New research finds: Not that much (theconversation.com)