Brendaly Drayton - Swimming Up Stream 2: Agency and Urgency in the Education of Black Men: New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, Number 150

SWIMMING UP STREAM 2: AGENCY AND URGENCY IN THE EDUCATION OF BLACK MEN
Brendaly Drayton, Dionne RosserMims, Joni Schwartz, Talmadge C. Guy (eds.)
New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, no. 150
Susan Imel, Jovita M. Ross-Gordon, and Joellen E. Coryell CoeditorsinChief

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This volume of New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education titled Swimming Up Stream 2: Agency and Urgency in the Education of Black Men is a continuation of a two-part series that focuses on salient topics and issues affecting Black males as they engage in adult education and learning. In the first volume, Swimming Upstream: Black Males and Adult Education, we used the analogy of the annual salmon run to describe the obstacles Black men confront in the daily struggle to lead meaningful and productive lives (Guy, 2014). We presented the voices and experiences of Black men through a variety of topics, including reentry adult college students, the role of trauma in the lives of young men, fatherhood, the formerly incarcerated, vets and the GI bill, and the GED setting as a counterspace for early negative schooling experiences. We began the volume by laying the sociohistorical foundations for the current experiences of Black men today and ended with a call to action.

Like the first volume, this book assumes that both the historical and current social contexts of learning have a unique impact on the way in which Black men engage in adult education. The chapter selections advance the conversations around adult Black males educational experiences by using academic research as well as program descriptions and personal narratives with a concern for the lived experiences and voices of the men. It focuses on pathways to achievement using multiple contexts and individual, institutional, and societal perspectives. More specifically, we explore the agency of Black men in carving out pathways to success, the programs that support these endeavors, and the role of civil society in facilitating or inhibiting their progress.

Through the different perspectives and voices represented in this volume, we continue to address issues facing Black men in adult education and challenge commonly held stereotypes, interactions, and policies. This current volume addresses such topics as the Black Lives Matter movement, the digital divide, sports, professional career development, sexuality, role of religion, Black male initiative programs, and college as a choice. The book is designed to raise questions about the distinctive experiences of this specific population and to explore the sociocultural dynamics that affect their education and learning. It also serves as a reminder that practitioners must regularly reflect on their own practices as they work toward increased engagement of Black men in learning communities and develop ways to support the personal and professional development of these men as adult learners.

We, the editors, wish to briefly reflect on what influenced each of us to come together to give voice to the lived experiences of adult Black males in the context of adult education. Our individual stories, respective positionalities, and deep concern for Black men's educational development converge in our scholarship as follows:

Where are the men? I ask. As a Black man, it would seem natural to dwell on issues affecting Black men in today's world. Actually, I was quite mature before I even began to think of this as a problem. I clearly remember in 1985 reading the cover page of a popular magazine asking about the disappearing species of Black males. I recall saying to myself that Black men aren't disappearing. Theyre right here. They were not a vanishing species but instead were actually quite numerous. It was that they were not in school or at workat least in the conventional sense.

Existentially, I have a great disdain for men, but I suppose especially Black men, who are unable to take care of their business, meaning not taking care of himself, his family, supporting the community where feasible, and so on. At the same time, I completely recognize how institutional racism negatively affects Black males. I see it directly, experience it, and know about it through an examination of the literature.

What is relevant in terms of our project is how late it is in the evolution of the literature on race and gender that the experiences of Black men are put forward. I feel a kind of double bind because many of our sisters have effectively and passionately described, documented, and theorized the condition and experiences of Black women. The bind consists in the desire to give women their space, while at the same time pushing for more space to hear the voices of Black men. Too often, these two impulses seem in tension with each other. To assert the problems associated with Black men anticipates a kind of male privilegeor does it? I don't think so because the problems faced by so many Black women are correlated with the problems faced by Black men. I think that's true. I feel it is a controversial and perhaps contentious issue with some of our sisters. The double bind is a tough place in which to reside. But Im pleased that in this series we have opened space to give expression to a conversation that is long overdue.