ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on complex negotiations. It draws upon Foucault's notion of discourses as "ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations which inhere in such knowledges and the relations between them". The book analyzes the lives and work of Black male teachers. It focuses on how the intersections of Blackness and maleness make the recruitment of Black male teachers a complex and consequential cultural project. The book examines the dilemmas that study participants encountered as they negotiated their relationships with women colleagues in the predominantly female workplace of schools. It traces complicated gender politics that often elude saviorist discourses on Black male teachers, and that definitely warrant closer attention.
