{"id":38,"date":"2018-05-21T19:24:20","date_gmt":"2018-05-21T19:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/american-ingredient\/?post_type=podcast&p=38"},"modified":"2021-03-17T20:28:37","modified_gmt":"2021-03-17T20:28:37","slug":"04-the-problem-with-the-black-family","status":"publish","type":"podcast","link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/american-ingredient\/podcast\/04-the-problem-with-the-black-family\/","title":{"rendered":"04: The problem with the Black family"},"content":{"rendered":"

This episode presents the work of Prof. Anthony Brown (University of Texas), who examines how the narrative of dysfunctional Black families has influenced education policy. As a historian of the social sciences, Prof. Brown demonstrates how both Black and White scholars in the early 20th<\/sup> century advanced the image of the absent Black father. Further, he highlights that the image of the Black male as being both simple and beastly has dictated policy since the first slaves were brought to America. Even though these assumptions about Black families and Black men have been proven false, they continue to shape how we approach racial disparities in a variety of policy realms. Prof. Brown\u2019s work demonstrates how certain narratives can be powerful, long lasting, and harmful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This episode presents the work of Prof. Anthony Brown (University of Texas), who examines how the narrative of dysfunctional Black families has influenced education policy. As a historian of the social sciences, Prof. Brown demonstrates how both Black and White scholars in the early 20th century advanced the image of the absent Black father. Further, he […]","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/american-ingredient\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2018\/05\/American-Ingredient-Ep-4-Anthony-Brown.mp3","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"51.33M","filesize_raw":"53824928","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":""},"tags":[30,23,28,26,27,24,25,31,29],"categories":[],"series":[2],"class_list":{"0":"post-38","1":"podcast","2":"type-podcast","3":"status-publish","5":"tag-austin","6":"tag-education","7":"tag-families","8":"tag-psychology","9":"tag-public-policy","10":"tag-race","11":"tag-sociology","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-ut","14":"series-american-ingredient","15":"entry"},"acf":{"related_episodes":"","hosts":[{"ID":650,"post_author":"38","post_date":"2021-02-08 16:24:20","post_date_gmt":"2021-02-08 16:24:20","post_content":"\n

Professor McDaniel specializes in American politics. His research areas include religion and politics, Black politics, and organizational behavior. His work targets how and why Black religious institutions choose to become involved in political matters. In addition, his work targets the role of religious institutions in shaping Black political behavior.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Eric McDaniel","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"eric-mcdaniel","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2021-02-08 16:24:21","post_modified_gmt":"2021-02-08 16:24:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/american-ingredient\/?post_type=speaker&p=650","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"guests":[{"ID":586,"post_author":"38","post_date":"2020-06-23 17:17:19","post_date_gmt":"2020-06-23 17:17:19","post_content":"\n

Anthony Brown is a Professor of Curriculum & Instruction in Social Studies Education. He also is an affiliated faculty in the areas of cultural studies in education, the John Warfield Center of African and African American studies and the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies. He received his B.A and M.A. in political science from California State University-Long Beach and received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His research agenda falls into two interconnected strands of research, related broadly to the education of African Americans. His first strand of research examines how educational stakeholders make sense of and respond to the educational needs of African American male students. The second strand examines how school curriculum depicts the historical experiences of African Americans in official school knowledge (e.g. standards and textbooks) and within popular discourse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, his work pursues a theoretical argument, which suggests that the examination of the historical and racial constructions of African Americans within the social sciences, educational literature, popular discourse and curriculum is vital to making sense of how questions are raised and how educational and curricular reforms are pursued for African American students in the present. His work has been published in Teachers College Record, Harvard Educational Review, Race Ethnicity and Education and the Journal of Educational Policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Brown is the recipient of numerous awards, including: Texas Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award and the AERA Division B, 2016 Outstanding Book Award.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Anthony Brown","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"anthony-brown","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2021-01-13 15:59:17","post_modified_gmt":"2021-01-13 15:59:17","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/american-ingredient\/?post_type=speaker&p=586","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"transcript":"

Welcome to The American Ingredient, a podcast that examines grace in American society from
\nan academic perspective, focusing on the work from social scientists and legal scholars. The
\nAmerican regent demonstrates that race is not the only ingredient in making America. But in order
\nto make America, you need to heaping spoonfuls.
\nNumerous scholars have highlighted that the way we frame problems shapes how we attempt to solve them. This is crucial.
\nUnderstanding what the government chooses one solution over another regarding the problem of black male achievement.
\nOne particular frame that is consistent is the belief that the black family’s dysfunctional and a black
\nmen have failed in the world as leaders of their households and its 2017 bid for the Alabama
\nSenate seat. Roy Moore insinuated that black families were reck and were better under slavery.
\nOthers, such as Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and President Donald Trump have also made similar
\nassertions that black families are poorly structured and are failing black children. However,
\nthey are not alone. Democrats have also made similar statements on two occasions.
\nPresident Obama has chastised black men for contributing to the dysfunction of black families.
\nMore recently, the organization Color Change and Family Story released report finding
\nthat media portrayals of black families encourage myths of black family dysfunction
\nand show white families as being the ideal type. These portrayals by politicians
\nand the media provide a frame for the problem of black male achievement that leads to specific policy
\nsolutions that may actually be detrimental for black male achievement. In today’s
\npodcast interview, Anthony Brown, a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in
\nthe College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Brown’s work examines
\nhow this interpretation the black family came about persisted and influenced policymaking.
\nWe begin the interview with Professor Brown, detailing the purpose of his latest project.
\nWell, one of the things that I try and do is locate like contemporary issues related to African-American
\nmales within historical spaces. It’s fascinating even to just ask a layperson,
\nwhat do you see as the most pressing issues related to African-American males? They think about it for a moment.
\nI mean, talking a person has no interest in this area. They’re not studying it. They’re not in the social sciences.
\nAnd they think for about two minutes and they say, well, I think there might be some issues of fathers who don’t have fathers.
\nAnd I have found that the next question I ask is, where did you learn that? And they can’t think of where
\nthey learned that. They can’t say, well, I read it in Time magazine. I remember reading report or course
\nI took it. University of Texas. It’s just the way they think about and say, well, what do you think? Secondly,
\nare the policy recommendations attached to that particular issue? They think for a moment they
\nponder and then they say, I think they need more mentors and role models.
\nAnd then I follow with the question. I said, well, where did you learn then and say, well, it just seems like it’s just out there. I just kind
\nof know. And I say, well, why do they need more role models and mentors and say,
\nwell, because they don’t have fathers in their lives. So they have this very linear argument. It’s Ari to
\nanchored. So if I ask a layperson, a principal. Other parents,
\nwe had that particular narrative. And that narrative frames the creation of schools,
\nthe necessity to hire more black male teachers. Well, what it does is it delimit any other kind
\nof question that we can ask. I’m talking about a complex problem. I’ll turn to people
\nin different professions like in the medical field. And so when you’re making a decision, when someone comes in with
\na heart problem, you say, I’m having some issues that see symptoms. Well, what
\ndo you think, Will? They’ll think of a multitude of things and list out all these variables that would if
\nyou only had one or two things, so would have had a high likelihood of death. I mean, you just cannot
\napproach a medical condition with that nessel. One of the things I say is that we cannot think of educational
\nproblems as complex and massive and historically entrenched and reduce it to this particular
\nsociological. And it was amazing to me the durability in the 60s, 70s, 80s changes.
\nBut it always comes back to that because in some cases it’s it’s already in the lexicon.
\nIt’s already way that we think about problems. And it probably provides some capital. I mean, you start saying
\nthat black boys need particular things and you get people to pay attention. The problems have to be framed in the ways that we already
\nknow them. And that’s the kind of crux of my work. And as it pertains to the social sciences,
\nthere was some things I was noticing over the years is that the way we talk about educational discourse,
\nlike the ways in which we reason about the experiences related to African-American males in particular
\nand African-American families was directly related to these kind of like old ways that we’ve
\nbeen thinking about sociology. I mean, you could take ideas from something. E. Franklin Frazier
\nwrote in the 1930s and literally cut and paste. There are several scholars that
\nProfessor Branwell mentioned and I want to give a little bit of background about them. The first is E. Franklin
\nFrazier, and he was a black sociologist who studies on black life in the mid 20th century,
\nheavily influenced the field of sociology. And his book relate to the family,
\nthe free Negro family. A study of family origins before the Civil War has been viewed by many
\nas being pivotal in the study of black family dynamics. And it’s important to note that he
\nwas extremely influential, actually becoming the first African-American to serve as the president of the American Sociological
\nAssociation. In addition to Eve Franklin Frazier, you also have St. Clair Drake,
\nanother sociologist that has apologist who is famous for his studies of black life in the Deep South
\nas well as the urban north. His book, Black Metropolis, which was coauthored with Horace,
\nare Kate Junior, chronicles the lives of blacks in Brownsville neighborhood on Chicago’s
\nSouth Side, along with his several other works. He is viewed as being
\nreally one of the key figures in understanding urban sociology and how urban settings
\ninfluence social interactions with individuals. And finally, Charles Johnson, a
\nnother black sociologist who worked in the early part of the 20th century, chronicled the lives of blacks
\nin the urban north and Deep South. He’d become the first black president of Fisk University. Historically
\nblack college in Nashville, Tennessee. But he would also serve on federal commissions
\nand White House advisory boards. All three of these men were senior p_h_d_ mediaworks, Chicago
\nin sociology. And in many ways the approaches from the Chicago school heavily
\ninfluenced how we understood the black family. With these three individuals being key figures and
\naccomplishing them. You could take ideas from something. E. Franklin Frazier wrote in the 1930s
\nand literally cut and paste them within a policy report in the present. And they’d be, you know, it
\nwould fit the exact timing. So there was almost a durability of ideas and that we
\nhadn’t moved away from. So my first exploration and this was just to really ask the question, well,
\nhow have people research African-American boys and African-American males over time?
\nYou know, when you look across multiple disciplines, when the question pertaining to the experiences of
\nAfrican-Americans, what topics come up most and what have been the implications of
\nthat. So for me is trying to understand how those ideas
\nand how that narrative arc becomes almost implicitly visible in policy discourse
\nthat no one’s citing. E. Franklin Frazier No one is citing any of the scholars of the
\nold sociological discourse from the Chicago school to the 30s and 40s. They’re not referencing it
\nbecomes a meta narrative. So, Professor Brown, how did the scholars of the 1930s reframe the discussion
\nof the black family and how did their work contribute to our current understanding
\nof the black family? This is an interesting it was a conceptual shift because up to that point,
\nsocial sciences precede African-Americans is like biologically deficit. So
\nthere was something wrong with our blood in our bones and our mass. So this is a huge shift to say that
\nAfrican-Americans problems are ecological, not biological. So this ecological shift,
\nof course, led scholars to look and probe in to the experiences of African-Americans.
\nAnd at the time, with race riots all throughout the Northeast and in urban settings,
\nthe African-Americans migrating there, they wanted to find ways to address this kind of racial problem.
\nSo the impetus was centered on issues happening in St. Lewis in Chicago. And
\none of the things they found is that they started studying the family. I mean, if it’s ecological,
\nit occurs within the ecology of the family. And that became the most prominent discourse
\nof its time. So I’d say about the 30s and 40s, a bulk of our discussion
\nwas related directly to the family itself. Shifts
\na little bit by the 50s and 60s with our attention almost to the sense that
\nwhat happens to African-Americans when they move within a different malu, when they’re now in urban
\ncontext as opposed to a rural context, what happens to the father? Where is he located? And in many cases,
\nhe was perceived as absent, absent in at least one or two ways, absent from the micro context of
\nthe black family. But absent from social science research like we can’t find him. I mean, you can
\nsee in in the in the book in the 1960s Talley’s Corner,
\nthis idea that African-Americans are not even been. There’s no empirical
\nlongitudinal analysis of black men. So they’re seen as not only absent from the home,
\nbut absent from research. But they kind of go two fold there because we don’t have access
\nto them and their families. And even when they are at have access to them, scholars would perceive them,
\nas they call them, peripheral dads, that they’re on the margins. They’re they’re
\nkind of not around. So this idea from the rural south to urban centers, black
\nmen kind of lost their sense of self, no longer connected to communities and
\nbecame wandering absent in wandering. That was kind of the analogy attached to them.
\nIt continued through the 60s, but less attention given to their inability,
\nbut more that they have been in this situation for so long they can’t imagine a reality other than
\nthis. So they can’t imagine being fathers and being stable and mothers can’t
\nproceed in this way as well. Fascinating thing. 1965 with the publication A Negro Family,
\nMonahan makes the policy recommendation that says, well, we can’t get these black
\nwomen husbands. We can’t. Moynihan That Professor Brown referring to is Daniel Patrick
\nMoynihan. He is famous for the Moynihan report, or more formally known as
\nthe Negro Family, The Case for National Action. Dr. Moynihan,
\nas sociologists who would serve for President Johnson as the undersecretary of
\nlabor when he wrote this, would also serve and work with President Nixon and serve in the Senate for
\nseveral terms. Wrote this report and the purpose of report was to help increase programs to address
\nthe deep roots of black poverty. In this report, he concluded that the dysfunction of the black
\nfamily, specifically the high rate of female led families, greatly hindered black economic
\nand political progress. And this report is used classically as a way to talk
\nabout how the dysfunction of the black family is the root cause of the failure for blacks to advance
\npolitically and economically. But we have this masculine get our manhood gap
\nand the man who gap in a six in the 60s. One way to to compensate for
\nthis gap was to put them on the front lines, put them in the military, a place where
\nthey could get real manhood, which is I thought is this. I had to read that a few times to say that
\nthe policy implication was called again back to absent fathers. So that
\ntangled in a pathology. Yet you put him at the front lines of policy recommendations have
\nalways been. They always come back to them all. All roads lead back to
\nthe sociology. The black family we’re talking about recruiting a black fathers. Getting more black fathers and involved
\nin schools is predicated on these deficits related to black families. Bringing more mentors if
\nit’s from fraternities or bring them in after school programs. Now, one of the things that I have to emphasize
\nand I will hope this is stated here in no way am I discouraging the implementation of role models
\nor having fraternities involved in schools. What is happening? Is it? You take a complex problem
\nand it’s reduced just to that. So the problems related in schools aren’t related to the structural
\nissues around housing and taxing that create schools. You know,
\nthere’s a deficit in what the schools are able to offer them in terms of resources,
\nhigh attrition rates, all the things that make a school not function structurally are reduced
\nto a micro. The macro is never related in schools, it is purely the micro. And who can better
\nfix the micro is another individual. So all educational discourse in some
\ncases becomes a psychological issue and not a sociological issue or
\na structural issue. A institutional issue. One first thing that stood out to me
\nis that many of these arguments came from black scholars. Think of E. Franklin
\nFrazier. And so there has been this contention between how white social
\nscientists have approached the study of African-Americans opposed to blacks. But we’re seeing that this narrative
\nactually started with black social scientists. Oh, yeah, that that’s fascinating. I mean,
\nmuch of the work that was cited by Moynihan was from from Kenneth Clarke,
\neven some of the work by Sinclair J. Clarke that Professor Brown is referring to was Ken
\nClarke, who, along with his wife, maybe fips Clarke, were black psychologists whose research focused
\non young children. They’re particularly famous for how their work on the damaging effects of racial segregation
\non the psyche of black children help the NAACP secure the victory in the Brown v. Board case,
\nKenneth and Mamie were the first two blacks to earn a p_h_d_ in psychology at Columbia University and
\nFurber. Kenneth Clark was the first black president of the American Psychological Association.
\nI think it’s a fascinating thing and I think there has been some work where Franklin Frazier had to kind
\nof backtrack on some of the things that he stated. I have a theory and I don’t know if this is purely
\nanecdotal. I mean, I think African-American men at the time, we know we were increasing numbers
\ngoing in higher education to increase numbers into certain fields. I would imagine
\nfor people like Charles Johnson and he Franklin Frazier, this is a significant opportunity to
\nbe able to get a p._h._d. And do this kind of research. What ends up happening is, you know, in our field,
\nthe question of the day, you’re going to gain spoils. You’re gonna gain capital by the kinds of questions
\nyou ask. So the Negro problem was already a problem that was framed in the early nineteen hundreds
\nand sociologists entered into an already existing discourse. You began to question like
\nthe motives and intentions of researchers. I don’t think you you stand a chance.
\nWe even look at their publication record. Most of them in journal, negro education,
\njournal, negro history is a very small pool of journal spaces
\nthat their ideas can reside in. And even where they end up becoming academics, they were able to go to University of Chicago
\nand to Harvard. They mostly ended up at Howard giggy and many HBCU.
\nSo I think there probably was a tendency to express a discourse
\nthat was already there and it was certainly capital tied to that. And I think there was some dissent
\nwhen it came to those ideas, but there was no other way in which to imagine the world. I think the world was already organ
\nized around that way of that kind of system of reasoning that reduced it to the black family, who is going
\nto provide the most precise analysis related to it. Another thing you pointed
\nout was this argument that moving from the rural south to the urban north led
\nto this breakdown in, I guess, how black men related to their families.
\nAnd this is kind of been a classic trope, even going back to slavery with ideas that as blacks moved
\nout of these rural southern areas and to the north, that this when problems occurred. Yeah. So
\nhow does this does this regional argument kind of hearken
\nback to the days of slavery or is it? Where exactly is the root of this idea of moving
\nout of the south, moved to the north, leads to dysfunction? Yeah, I’ve been reading recently. I’ve
\nI’ve gone back to about the 15th century and even some stuff that Winthrop
\nJordan wrote in the 60s about kind of early Enlightenment ideas around black men
\nor males of African descent. And one of the things that you see pervasive
\nover time is this idea that black men can’t function in places that have too much
\nstimulation, like this idea that black men aren’t naturally libidinous.
\nSo I think some of these ideas are are packaged within different theories within
\nthe social sciences, but the durability of them have a much longer duration
\nthat can be traced back to the very beginnings of modernity. So when you’re beginning to conceptualize the citizen,
\nthe antes citizen or the non-citizen is the Negro male in an agenda context, it’s the
\nfemale black female is almost like written out of it, but the kind of prototypical
\nthe other the proverbial other becomes black male. It’s always rooted in his inability
\nto have impulse control. Rural is a simple system, simple social
\nsystem. The relationships are patriarchal. They’re defined in a
\nmarket economy in the north. In Chicago, life is far more complex
\nand they in many cases lose their minds. And I can quote things that are offered by even Frazier, who they
\nsay they end up in this space. In this particular mulu. And they begin
\nto engage in kind of serial relationships they no longer roomates remain attached.
\nThat’s why the idea of wandering becomes pervasive during that time. But I would argue that those ideas were
\nalready anchored by kind of modernist philosophical thinkers of the time that
\njust played out in different ways. They played out in the context of slavery through black men being
\nalmost viewed as. Acquiescing simpletons
\ntheir tacho to the simple economy. They need discipline in order to function in it. But
\nthey’re are also implicit in that they were the brute, but they didn’t explicitly become analogous
\nto the brute until after emancipation, when the idea is that we can’t control them. So these ideas of
\ncontrol and space. I think you could trace them to the eighth and ninth century. It just
\nhappened to play out in different ways in the context of the illogical discourse in scientific
\ndiscourse, isn’t it? During the period to justify enslavement and then in the context of the Negro
\nproblem of the twentieth century, it plays out in different ways, but it’s all the foundation of
\nit is the idea that Negro men have a kind of peculiar cardinality. You see it in
\nthe inthere lot. Theologians talked about it in the nineteen hundreds, of course, scientists.
\nThat’s the premise of the idea that something is peculiar about our bodies even see this
\nplay out in a recent documentary I saw where Daryl Gates is justifying why
\nthe time. You might correct me on this. It might have been between 9 to 12 men
\nhad died of chokeholds within a year through the LAPD. And his justification
\nwas that black men have kind of their bodies don’t operate normally
\nto the chokehold. And that’s why they’re dying. So, again, these kind of scientific
\narguments, this is the chief of police giving a press conference and arguing that there
\nis something about the biological composition of black men that makes them die, that other people have. I chokehold
\nthem. They would not die. So I think it’s reduced to the body. It’s also reduced
\nto the soul in some say sense. And I don’t mean just the soul like the actual the makeup
\nof black men. The essence of them that makes them not able to function in a complex setting,
\nwhether in the end we see those discourses in schools in one context,
\nwhite males in private schools, they’re sitting on couches, reading books.
\nBut when you look at a school based on a particular reform for black males in Chicago, they need blue
\nblazers, they need the white shirt and the tie and the body needs to be erect.
\nThere has to be a certain disciplining. And that disciplining is going to come largely from black men of size,
\nof stature. So this there’s a governing that is attached to black males. And this is controversial
\nstuff because most of you know, I have to almost qualify. Yes, we need more black male teachers.
\nThey make up less than 1 percent of the population. But I think what we have to trouble when it gets
\nprivileged in this particular way, what undergirds the arguments for needing
\na particular kind of black man in schools and even the study I did a death nogami on 10 black male
\nteachers to work with black male students. And what happened is that these black male teachers didn’t even realize that they
\nwere enveloped within this discourse. They didn’t even realize they in fact, they it almost
\nthrough the study came to the realization is that is that all I am is all I’m a disciplinarian.
\nAm I? I’m not a thinker, a scientist, a mathematician, a history teacher.
\nThe utility of me as a teacher is only to function to to govern black boys. And
\nthat was troubling to many of them because they spent many years learning about reading and literacy, how to teach
\nin pedagogy. All those things were kind of their pride of their work, but they realized that most of
\nthe world around them even promotion. How do you get out of the classroom? Become a principal?
\nYour ability to manage other black boys? You do that well. You get a raise. In many
\nways, black men have been champion for years. So if you think of the movie Lean on Me,
\nI think there were guess black educators almost come off as drill sergeants and they’re seen as the
\nheroes. Yes, we have a strong black male comes in and kind of gets in office. A sudden everybody
\nmagically learns. Yeah. I mean, that one of the things that gets missing
\nfrom that, again, going back to the men in this study is there may be a certain
\nsternness, but when you when you study the men, there’s a whole bunch of thought
\nthat goes into it. And what’s fascinating, too, is that the the different ideological
\nstances that the men I mean, some are very strong nationalist and some of them are cultural nationalists.
\nSome of them believe in assimilation, but they all kind of
\nadhere tacitly to the belief that black men have to be physically present
\nwhen interacting with black boys in urban settings, particularly the place where I did my study.
\nBut I think one of the things that the pervasive of this is that, again, the whole world
\nreduces all problems to black boys, to their inability to control their bodies.
\nSo what better body to control? Another body is one that looks like a sort it kind of has this rolemodel
\nthesis. You know, the idea that I’m going to be informed by certain behaviors
\nand dispositions, I’ll see those behaviors and dispositions. And I want to mimic those behaviors and dispositions
\nand I can achieve at the same love in a certain some truth to that. But if we see that in a linear sense,
\nyou reduce all of the pedagogical processing that these men put into the work that they do, they’re not
\njust in any moment rolling up on a black boy in a hallway.
\nThey know that’s that. They know where he can take. They know when to do it. When you begin to
\nlay out the nuance is pedagogically what they do. It’s quite amazing. But yeah, there’s certainly
\na discourse that says manhood and masculinity are attached
\nto the black nation. The black nation cannot heal. It plays out in micro context.
\nSo the kind of political discourse of the Million Man March and other institutional things that like if the health
\nof the community can only function the body, the black body politic, we think of this in
\nan analogous sense can only function of the black male body is healthy and strong and standing out in front
\nof the issues related to it. And it was you know, feminists have had major issues of that with over the time, but it is
\ncertainly a prominent discourse in many of us here, too. And in many cases, when they hear me talk to
\nthem, they go, I never thought about it that way. They never really think that there are other ways to imagine it. Maybe
\nit’s because there’s a skepticism that no one will address our problems. And I
\nrecall sitting in a an open session, a panel session here in the city
\naround what to do for African-American males. And a professor and I were sitting in
\nthe audience. And then we noticed that only the questions they were asking were about ties
\nand and how black boys pulled their pozible, all these things related to it. And
\nwe said, well, there’s some major structural issues like how schools are represented, what where they can go
\nto school, decisions families can make. We need to ask those questions as well. Quickly responded.
\nWe know that structural and institutional issues exist, but we can’t control that readily. But
\nwe can control what a black boy brings into the schools. And it’s
\njust the way we think about it. We’ve not. That’s why I call it a master narrative is no theory attached to
\nit. It just becomes the reason why we approach the work. We’re doing this probably some capital
\nthat comes from it, funding of a school. More resources come. And so if you present the problem
\nin the typical sociological way, again, it’s going to give you a promotion. It’s going to give you a grant.
\nIt’s going to give you opportunities. If you begin to question in a way, I think it creates a little bit of dissonance where,
\nwell, let’s go study high achieving African-American males in Middle-Class settings or a private elite
\nschools. Maybe, maybe not. If I could frame it within
\na trope of getting out of the hood and then study it that way, I think it would have
\nappeal. But just a study for its own purposes. I think people would be less.
\nThey’d be there wouldn’t be less of an impetus to study that particular work. I recall years
\nago going giving a presentation in a district to 300 teachers and I said imagine for
\na moment if Banana Republic, the Fisher Foundation, does Banana Republic, Old Navy
\nand Gap. They did give money. Major philanthropies and philanthropists for education.
\nAnd so what if they said they were gonna hire us 10, 15 tailors and they’re
\ngonna give all of your boys three or four presto, tailors
\nare gonna come out, they’re going to fit the boys pants are going to give them a belt for different colors, patterns. You start kind of clapping
\nlike that, be fantastic. And I said, if you were able to pull that off, do you believe
\nyou’d be able to change the achievement gap in this particular district? Dead silence in the room.
\nYou know why? Because they know it’s not possible. They know that fitted pants won’t. Give
\nyou a fix, an achievement gap. But why do we pay attention to it? Because we believe
\nthat telling a black boy to pull up his pants can fix the problem. We
\nhave this idea of the deterioration of black man in the black family.
\nWhat exactly are facts? I mean, I think one of things you pointed out is but the way we think about black
\nfamilies is factually incorrect. Yeah, well, what exactly are the facts?
\nWell, the CDC came out with a study and they actually argue the argument that most people
\nwill throw just I mean, they’ll throw out 90 percent, 80 percent. Again, there’s an
\nappealing discourse. Who says so? If you want to appeal to the needs of black males. You have to present their problems
\nattached to the father. The most common one is it 80 percent of all black boys live
\nwithout a father. Now, what they’re looking at is the data that actually
\nsays that black females are not married.
\nSo when you look at black boys, it’s something like one point three million fathers
\nare involved in their fathers lives. So, for example, my take me, for example, if I
\nif I was not married to my wife as much time as
\nI spend with my son and daughter, violin lessons, all the things
\ncanin would be living in a home in what was be defined as a fatherless
\nhome because he’s not married, even though my involvement. So the measurement wasn’t that there’s
\nis there’s a continuum around these and fathers have different degrees of involvement. And sometimes
\nit has to do with the changing relationship between marriage. People are having children not getting married at higher
\nrates. In fact, the numbers are changing dramatically. So our reporting of black father
\ninvolvement is usually attached, that number. But when you look at the number of black males that are involved,
\nthere are far greater in the same study. They studied something like 250 to
\nmaybe three hundred men, white, Latino, male. And I think they were looking at indicators
\nof like how many males bay their fallen sons and read
\nto them involvement in black men outperformed them. And every single kind
\nof micro measure of what we define is involved with what their children and their sons.
\nSo some of the things as has we have to change the way we report the data.
\nAnd that that muddies up the water. I mean, how am I now going to say, well, black males are
\nthey actually are involved? Where do we go from there? That’s because
\nwe have a can’t the way we think about it. We already echo certain ideas to get people
\nin public policy to pay attention. This muddies the water up a little bit. And it says, well, where where
\ndo the problems reside if their fathers are in their lives? So when you create a school egg recall this even in
\nmy study where black boys would, they would the teachers would say something to the boys in the study
\nand the black boy returns. I have a father. The presumption was I’m here to be
\na surrogate father, for example. Arnie Duncan, in 2010\/11,
\nhis big kind of policy pitch to the world was something called five. By 2015,
\nhe says, by 2015, on 5 percent of the teaching population to be black males.
\nAnd his argument for why he said they most black boys don’t
\nhave fathers. So these men could serve as surrogate fathers. No argument about
\nwhat they can offer pedagogically in the classroom. What they could do in terms of instruction, even relationships
\nand friendships that could occur in the context of schooling or what they can offer by way of mentorship.
\nBut they could serve as surrogate fathers. So even the discourse within wider public policy
\nand Nike was involved in Spike Lee was involved. John Legend was involved. It just
\nbecomes the way we think about it’s the default discourse to understand what I see as very complicated
\nissues related to black males. We know that this is much more complicated issue.
\nAnd you mentioned earlier that a lot of discussion is what can we do to change black boys?
\nSo will we be addressing of an entrepreneur? You actually say it shouldn’t be. What should we do to change them? It should what we should do to change
\nus, to work with them. So what are some the things that you believe schools need to do
\nin order to accommodate the needs of black men? Teacher training is vital.
\nI mean, I think one of the things that teachers aren’t giving opportunity is to like really spend
\nsome time thinking about this. This one shot professional development were Anthony Brown
\ncomes out and gives you 20 slides about the most pressing issues related to African-American males.
\nAnd then you go away. There’s different degrees of development. So you need spaces where there’s large percentages
\nof African-American males, maybe in Detroit and even certain districts where they represent a small percentage
\nwhere there’s little interaction with African-Americans. We respond to black boys
\nin a way that requires some unpacking and teachers just there’s a gut
\nresponse to things that don’t require that attention. We’re talking more classrooms. It’s in the context,
\nthese issues, suspensions, expulsions, we look at the data, but they happen in the micro context.
\nAnd it is an individual that is asserting meaning and. Point those meanings and those meanings have
\nhuge implications. I’ll share a study that A recently was done, they
\ngave a picture, they gave 300 early child educators. Guy’s name is Gilliam.
\nThere’s a study that was done at Princeton and they gave them a clicker and they said every time you
\nsee a challenging behavior in the classroom. So there’s an image of a white girl, white, male,
\nblack or a black male. So every time you see a challenging behavior in this classroom, once you click your clicker,
\nevery time you see it and say the black boys and quadrant A. Now, there are no definitive definition
\nchallenged behavior there, Berardi, definitions that exist. But many people point to the definition
\nprovided by Powell and colleagues in their 2007 article in the Journal of Early Intervention.
\nThey state that a challenge of behavior is any repeated pattern of behavior or perception of behavior
\nthat interferes with or is at risk of interfering with optimal learning or engagement with pro-social
\ninteractions with peers or adults. This concern about challenging behavior is important
\nbecause children who repeatedly show challenging behavior are more likely to suffer
\nfrom learning disabilities as well as face suspensions and expulsions.
\nAnd so because of this, how we deal with challenging behaviors and who we isolate as having challenging behaviors
\ndictates a great deal of what teachers do day to day, as well as how
\nschool districts develop policies to address learning. So the data was overwhelming.
\nThey click black boys more than any other group. Here’s the irony. There were no challenging
\nbehaviors. So they saw challenging behaviors when there were no challenging behaviors and they saw them more
\nwith the group that gets identified in those particular wayso. Certainly we have an implicit bias.
\nIt’s happening in schools and the researchers that have done implicit implies if it’s if it’s if it was biased
\nfrom the beginning, it could be undone and it can only be undone by giving teachers opportunities to
\nreally think about the kinds of things that are swimming in their heads about the students they serve.
\nWhether they and I think a pervasive one is the sociological stories we tell about black
\nfamilies. I used to tell my my brother in law he would send
\nmy mother in law and father in law to the school. And I’d say because it’s work and school,
\nhe couldn’t get there, no meetings. I said, you got to get out there because there’s being a story is being informed
\nabout your daughter that you don’t know. And he’s kind of frowning and going, well, what do you mean, Anthony? I sat there
\nthinking that did Jaylen is being raised by her grandparents.
\nSo there’s there’s no father. There’s no mother, said you. And in Cheree, which is why I need to
\ngo out to that school and shift that. And he never thought about it. You know, just
\nhis his set of circumstances. I realize that the world will actually frame it in that particular way.
\nSo I think we need a lot of time. As much as I critique like our impulses
\naround hiring black men or black teachers with the assumption that this linear relationship,
\nthe problem I have with is that we don’t ask any other question. We only see that. And then if you’re able to achieve
\nthat, the hiring more black male teachers or get a mentor program involved in the show. Black men
\nshaking the black boys hands and they’re giving them high fives and you’re working. So you begin to kind of these
\nthese moments where you capture institutionally what you’re doing with it doesn’t anchor
\nor change it because it has no connection to the classroom. Curricular practices, pedagogical practices, the
\nclassroom teachers need a lot of time thinking about what they think when
\nthey make decisions in classrooms. And so what are some of the major challenges you faced
\nin, I guess, getting your message out? How kind of pushback are you receiving?
\nThe biggest one early on is people assuming that I’m saying we don’t need to hire more black male teachers.
\nThat was the number one response. The second response is that my work is too historical
\nand too theoretical in the sense that. Schools
\nhave. They want a utility. They want ideas to immediately respond to literacy. Immediately
\nrespond to math problems. And I say you ask bigger questions that will allow you to understand
\nwhy black boys are not getting into the trigonometry, which I just recently saw some data.
\nThis is in central Texas. Black boys are the lowest, whether in
\nthe low S.I.S. Or in middle class. Every other group outperforms black girls,
\nwhite girls, white males, Asian males, every group, black males
\nare at the very bottom in terms of getting to at least algebra to trig
\nand beyond. So one of the things I want them to understand is, is that just a math problem?
\nNo. That is a bigger socio historical issue. So my
\ntask is to help people understand and trouble the way they think about. And I just have to come sometimes
\nhelp districts, you know, understand that I can’t. And why I do that. So
\nit’s like this immediate, you know, I want something where they’re gonna want to
\nread immediately. And as I. The problem isn’t whether they want to read.
\nIt’s it’s the fact that you don’t even have books that represent them in the classroom. And that
\nthat is a structural issue, because the decision for a teacher today, even if they had the desire
\nto add books, you couldn’t go to Barnes and Noble and find those books.
\nYou have to be really clever. You have to find bookstores and and places you have to go online.
\nThis is very kind of archeological thing when you bring knowledge and whether teachers are willing or capable
\ndoing this, a whole nother issue. But no, we’re not just talking about math.
\nWe’re talking about problems with knowledge. And how do we make that? How do we even make math relevant?
\nIs it just about math or is it something bigger and deeper about the actual black culture
\nof this school is what I try and do. I mean, surprisingly, people
\nhave began to listen to what I have to say related to these issues. But the biggest challenge
\nI’ve had is that they want solutions immediately.
\nHow are you able to get them to stop looking for this?
\nStop looking for just on a very real quick solution and to actually start to look at
\nthemselves and how they need to adjust? Well, one of the things I try and do is I take
\nsomething that teachers already do. So I’ll say something along the lines. How do you teach
\na child to read? And we’ll put on poster paper and teachers will lay out all of these
\nthings that they do and so on. So I think if we put a picture of the child in the middle middle
\nof like thousands of arrows going at what they do to scaffold and build a
\nchild to eventually become a reader and the same things, I want them to think
\nI want them to think about multiple things that make possible. Why black boys
\nare being expelled, suspended to greater rates. What do you think they could be? And once you get to thinking about
\nthe things that they are already doing that require complexity and layers of complexity. They
\nrealize that they’ve they’ve seen a process. A if you just had one solution to fix literacy.
\nWe’d have a literacy problem because you do so many things to help a child learn
\nhow to do literacy. And most teachers will engage those questions. Most police officers
\nwill begin. We begin to think about like Woody before. What is it about this particular group?
\nYou have already set set of ideas and your response is directly tied to
\nthose things. First of all, they’re black or male. The time of day, the type of car. And there’s this reaction
\nto that. The question is why? And I think that’s the kinds of questions that we have to ask teachers
\nabout. They’re already doing complex things. You could ask any math teacher, science teacher,
\nEnglish teacher. There are many different things we begin to ask them about, like why are black males failing?
\nAgain, we have this we have a problem with thinking we’re so deeply
\nentrenched in bias. It’s very difficult for them to even imagine that there
\nis a space where black people achieve. I mean, even that in of itself,
\nthe idea of showing pictures to my pre-service teachers
\nin the eighteen hundreds of African-American men. I showed them the picture of
\nDubois’s Paris nineteen hundred. So I flipped through all three hundred and fifty pictures.
\nAnd so I don’t give them the time frame, I don’t give them the context. They just say I want you to write different things.
\nAnd they located they don’t know or even where to locate you. They don’t know if this is. They know. It looks so
\nall that is it slavery. But it can’t be slave because African-Americans are inside. So they’re perplexed historically.
\nThey don’t know even where to locate African-American achievement. And what’s ironic
\nis it’s all over. Was that even a students that I grew up in Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C.,
\nand high performing African-Americans were all around me for some reason I couldn’t
\nsee it. So even when it’s there, it’s right
\nthere in her presence, she cannot realize maybe there could be
\nyou disavow it as an outlier. So there’s this particular massive narrative
\nof underachievement that’s tied to us as a group, African-Americans as a group. And when you see
\nthese moments, black doctor, black lawyer, president of a university or whatever
\nmeasurement of achievement we have, you disavowed significance because Bailey seen as some type of
\noutlier. It it colors even my approach as a parent
\nraising a now nine year old African-American male, for example, there the day he left
\nthe house with. It was raining and he put on a raincoat and and
\nhe didn’t have an umbrella and he put the hood on to cover him. So my immediate
\nreaction was to take the hood off. You know, I get put in this box, I’m f
\nI’m absent. I fit the narrative. But if I’m present, I’m overbearing. OK.
\nSo it’s it’s it’s very interesting to being a parent in this
\nin and from a standpoint of a researcher. All I can continue to do is document
\nwhat I’m seeing. And I don’t see these narratives necessarily going away because so
\nmany people are invested in them on many different levels at the level of the research or the
\npolicymaker, the person wants to develop a school. If you want to write a book, the narrative
\nitself is appealing. And sometimes that appeal is even out to sometimes
\nhear people’s say, you know, I hear people say, you know, I come from the hood and I have no problem with the hood
\nstory. But when you deconstruct it, you realize that particular person, that
\nyou had a group in Brooklyn, but it was in like a two story brownstone. And there are tons of
\nAfrican-Americans, including my family, that have two story brownstone, three story brownstone.
\nBut it’s in the middle of what we conceptualize where although I know conceptually Brooklyn has changed, there’s
\na different imaginary attached to Brooklyn now. But the 80s and 90s, Brooklyn already
\nhad a fixed narrative. So to to tie your story to that and your journey.
\nIt gives you capital. You could sell that. Or in a very appealing way, rather than no life
\nhas been comfortable entire life, and I’ve. And here I am today in this particular way. There’s this.
\nYou can’t write a book. There’s no memoir for that. And I think that is the crux of the problem that
\nthe story itself has so many stakeholders invested in it. It’s very
\nhard to get out of this kind of cultural discourse. Well, Professor Brown,
\nthank you so much for joining us. This is fun. It’s been a delight to have you here. Yes. Thank you.
\nAs Professor Brown points out, many of these beliefs we have about the black family, black men are so deeply
\nentrenched that we can not break away from them, even though we know how harmful they are.
\nIn early April, the Government Accountability Office released report finding racial bias in school
\ndiscipline. They found that even in more affluent schools, black students
\nwere punished more often and more severely for similar infractions as their white counterparts.
\nThese findings come at a time when President Trump is calling for more punishment of students as a method
\nfor improving school safety. As Professor Brown points out, this get tough response
\ndoes little to actually help student achievement and may even increase the achievement gap between
\nblacks and their counterparts. We must be aware of the narratives we use to explain
\na problem because these narratives can divert our attention from a true causes and may lead to
\nmaking the problem worse.
\nThank you for listening to the American ingredient. I’m Eric Daniel, a professor in the Department of Government at the University
\nof Texas. I would like to think Michael heidenreich and Jacob Weiss, their assistance, along
\nwith the Department of Government, the University of Texas and the University of Texas, ELEI t-s
\nDevelopment Studio.<\/p>\n"},"episode_featured_image":false,"episode_player_image":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/american-ingredient\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2018\/02\/The-American-Ingredient-Logo-with-text.png","download_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/american-ingredient\/podcast-download\/38\/04-the-problem-with-the-black-family.mp3","player_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/american-ingredient\/podcast-player\/38\/04-the-problem-with-the-black-family.mp3","audio_player":"

04: The problem with the Black family<\/a><\/blockquote>