Customer Reviews

Black Masculinities and Schooling: How Black Boys Survive Modern Schooling

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This book is wonderful, yet disheartening. The author analyzes the dynamics between Afro-Caribbean male high school students and their teachers in a majority-black school near London. It just rattles my soul that the oppression of black males in academia is so universal. Like in the United States, in this British school, teachers fear black males and will discipline them at the drop of a dime. They are constantly comparing them to Asians and deeming them lacking. Racism in other countries could be discussed, but racism at the school and in Britain was denied by faculty. Even the black faculty are not supportive. In this school, white males could wear many hairstyles, but black students were banned, in an unwieldy, poorly-written rule, from having "ethnic haircuts."

This book shows the dynamic two-way street that is education. Several types of teachers are listed, but so are several type of black male students. Black males are not rendered a monolithic entity. Thus, the author writes masculinities in the plural for the title. Students are unfairly castigated by staff, but they also get over on the school in all kinds of sly, humorous ways. Black male students are just as critical and thoughtful as the many teachers that condemn them. The author cites Foucault and proves that he understands his ideas about power and discourse. Oddly enough, the author protests against categorizing people, yet he practices it throughout the text.

This book is well-written. It uses serious academic and political terminology. This is not for the unsophisticated reader, even teacher, that is not familiar with top-level cultural criticism. I love the book cover. It shows a black male with an expressionless stare that communicates a lot. He is robed in a school uniform and set against a graffiti tagged background; this purposely points to two contrasting influences.

I am surprised that the teachers opened up to this researcher. Nothing they say meets his approval. They are either deemed racist if they criticize the students or naive exoticizers if they praise them. The researcher is obviously biased. He labels the school Township School in reference to apartheid-era South Africa. Though he offers recommendations to both parties in the last chapter of the book, clearly he assumed the glass was half empty or entirely empty before he even began his work.

This book surprises and troubles me in several regards. First, the relationship between black males with white males or females of any race is never really explored. In American educational studies, academics (like Cornel West) have pondered why black boys are at the top of the social ladder, but at the bottom of the educational one. White love of black culture is brought up in this book. However, the dynamics between black males with those of a different race or gender is not brought up at all. The reader gets little information about whether students that are not black and male face the same issues or have the same opinions.

In America, academics have wondered how black male students are the best athletes and musicians, but the poorest students. They've opined that schools which don't like them as students, love having them on teams and in extracurricular activities. Here, sports and culture get mentioned only to a small extent. I wonder if British schools focus solely on academics. Maybe that's one reason why Afro-Caribbean male students feel alienated and indifferent to the institution.

This book contains example after example of black males being "excluded" (what we Americans would call "suspended") for no reason at all. The United States has a rich history of civil rights protests and litigious activity. Here, no student ever mentions their parents' suing or protesting the school. Maybe British black people are not as prone to "fight da power" as we are here. I don't mean to be culturally superior, but these students would have been aided if someone challenged these schools in the pocket book or through the media.

Whereas the author emphasizes teachers' racism, he lets the black male students off the hook for their rampant sexism, at to a lesser degree, their homophobia. This is highly problematic. Perhaps the many white female teachers here are oppressive to these black males because the black males are equally oppressive to them. Sexism from any type of man is inexcusable, yet the author says little on this tragedy.

It was fascinating to read this as a person on the other side "of the pond." The author said that black British boys listen to jungle as the music which defines their black manhood, In the US, most people haven't heard of jungle music and it's associated with white male youth, not their black counterparts. One teacher comments that she dislikes how black British students are picking up ideas from "Long Beach, New York." The author doesn't correct the teacher. He must have no idea that Long Beach is in California and that New York has an area called Long Island. LOL!

This book was excellent, despite my critiques. I actually enjoyed it much more than African-American discussions of the topic (aka, Mahabuti and Kunjufu). I definitely recommend this text.