The Department of Labor Statistics are misleading for men, particularly Black men.

Did you know Black men make up 1% of elementary school teachers in America.

The statistics lump men and women together. Time to be real on this fact!

MenTeach replies:

Yes – I agree it’s really misleading to have the percentages of male an females of any underrepresented group combined and I would like the information to be clearer but BLS doesn’t separate the data of males and females by “race.”

Look at the data

The only way I know to do it with BLS is to take the percentage of men times the percentage of African-Americans, etc. and that would be a very generous estimate of 1.8612% (18.8% men x 9.9% African-American men & women combined).

If we think the percentage of men are low – the percentages of men of color are alarming. I always like to ask reporters when they call – what would a young African-American or Asian American boy think if he looks around and never sees someone from his community teaching in his school. Wouldn’t he come to the conclusion that he doesn’t belong there? And that men that might look like him are not welcome?