Factors affecting the presence of African American males on counseling and psychology training program faculties

The severe underrepresentation of African American males in counseling and psychology is significant, especially in light of these fields’ mandates as health professions. In this chapter, I will use a within-race intersectionality paradigm (gender, class, skin color) to inform my analysis of factors that affect the presence of African Americans males on counseling and psychology faculties. I will briefly elucidate factors that, early on, effectively “weed out” African American males from the pool of aspirants for higher education, and thence, from counseling and psychology programs and faculties. I will apply cooperative inquiry – a radical peer-to-peer research method regarded as a well-developed action research approach – to explore Black males’ experience along a range of narratives.