On the Imagined Black Male Father: The Case of My Father’s Subjectivity

• In Event: Complicating Black Fatherhood as a Site of Educational Theorizing and Practice

Abstract

Few social constructs resonate more within Black male policy concerns than the "absent father narrative." While some scholars and policy reports (Harris, 2018) have critiqued these notions as empirically (Rickets, 1989) and historically inaccurate, the absent father narrative remains pervasive within conversations about the education of Black males. What gets subtly conceptualized within this discourse is what the imagined father would look like and the impact he would have on his son's life. These ideas particularly get taken up in education as it relates to the pedagogy of Black male teachers. What gets further implanted in this idea of the imagined father also gets embedded within the discourse of the Black male teachers, which often is taken up in a non-descriptive fashion, where the mere presence of a Black man assumes to yield the desired social and educational outcomes for Black boys in their presence. What gets lost from this discourse is a complex understanding of how socio-historical context makes possible the diverse pedagogies Black men draw from in their work as fathers, mentors, and teachers of Black male youth.

For this presentation, I draw on my father's experiences to illustrate the complex and multilayered ways his identities impacted my identity formation. This presentation intends to challenge the invisible presence (Connor & White, 2011) of Black fathers and highlight how specific pedagogies offered to me took shape within specific spatial and temporal contexts.
I draw from Sylvia Wynter's (1995) notion of subjective understanding to consider why and how my father's subjective position took shape over time. Wynter defines subjective understanding as knowledge constructed within specific conceptual processes. I draw from the following questions in this paper: What social contexts made it possible for my father's aesthetic, intellectual, and varied knowledge constructions to take shape? Furthermore, how did these contexts and knowledge constructs inform my identity as a Black man and a researcher of Black males? I draw on these questions to illustrate my father’s hybrid subjectivities and the resultant impact of his diverse identities on my growth and identity as a scholar of Black male educational research.

Author

• Anthony L. Brown, University of Texas at Austin