Books: New in Print

Law and Behavior

Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity, by Ann Arnett Ferguson (University of Michigan Press, 839 Greene St., Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1104; 272 pp., $29.95 hardback) . Based on three years of research at an elementary school, this examination of young black males' high rate of suspension and other trouble with school authorities draws on interviews with teachers, principals, truant officers, and relatives of the students. The author, a Smith College professor of African-American studies, constructs a disturbing picture of the way what she sees as educators' beliefs in a "natural difference" of black children and the "criminal inclination" of black males shapes decisions that disproportionately single out black males as being "at risk" for failure and punishment. She demonstrates how a group of 11- and 12-year-old African-American boys are identified by school personnel as "bound for jail' and how these youths, in turn, construct a sense of self under such adverse circumstances. Rather than simply internalizing the labels attached to them, she says, the boys look critically at schooling, as they evaluate the meaning and...