Opinion
College & Workforce Readiness Opinion

Obama’s ‘Brother’s Keeper’ Effort: Noble But Incomplete

By Julia Grant — March 21, 2014 5 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

With the launch of the My Brother’s Keeper initiative, President Barack Obama says he wants to empower young men of color to achieve success in school and society.

Although the initiative is in many ways symbolic, there is substantial support for efforts to create new programs that involve mentoring at-risk boys and to build a body of research for reformers to draw upon in developing best practices. While some will no doubt charge the president with racism for targeting youths of color, and others have already voiced skepticism about what Mr. Obama has done in support of blacks to this point, few observers are likely to question why the initiative focuses solely on males and appears to tie together success and manhood in ways that are unsettling for advocates of gender equity.

As a civil rights advocate, I applaud the president’s efforts—to an extent. The data demonstrating that males of color are among our most endangered students are indisputable. Among black college graduates, only about 34 percent are male. Black males grossly outnumber whites in suspensions and expulsions and are overrepresented in special education and underrepresented in Advanced Placement classes.

But the “boy problem” is hardly a new phenomenon; it dates back to the early 20th century. The boys who occasioned the earlier crisis were almost entirely poor immigrants, and they swelled the ranks of dropouts and delinquents. In 1917, educational psychologist Edward Thorndike reported for the U.S. Commissioner on Education that girls were more likely than boys to graduate from high school by a significant margin.

In our quest to promote success for males, we may overlook girls of color who, while doing better in many venues, still suffer academically in comparison to both white males and females."

Instead of rethinking schooling to accommodate immigrant boys, educators too often shoved them into special education classes and public schools created specifically for boys. Believing there was a unique boyish essence that must be catered to, educators offered same-sex practical education with male role models. They did little to address the issues of poverty and discrimination these young men encountered. And they failed horribly when it came to getting young males to question some of the tenets of masculinity that contributed to the very problems that reformers were trying to eradicate.

Today’s boys of color encounter a very different world. Although immigrants were often poor, many of them found opportunities to work their way up the blue-collar ladder. They didn’t experience the entrenched racism that blocked the doors to respectable working-class jobs for black youths and men. While employment discrimination has lessened since the 1970s, in today’s economy the job ladder has weakened and decent jobs are sparse. Zero-tolerance policies in schools have supplied fodder for the criminal-justice system; blacks make up 37 percent of the youths in detention facilities, but only 16 percent of the total youth population. But we still don’t know enough about the variety of factors that make some boys particularly vulnerable to violence and impervious to school’s importance.

The emphasis on research in the Obama initiative is heartening. Too many past programs were built on stereotypes about how boys learn best. Difficult and delinquent boys were herded together in male-only classrooms with male teachers in the 1920s and 1930s, even when there were better female teachers to be had, and boys toughed it out in schools where tough love could mean a thrashing. There was similarly little existing research to build on when, starting in 2006, same-sex classes and academies started sprouting up across the nation to better educate boys of color. Instead, many operated on the basis of what the American Civil Liberties Union has termed “repackaged stereotypes” in their efforts to enroll boys.

President Obama’s initiative focuses on gathering research on early-childhood education, school readiness, and parenting, among other things, but says nary a word about male peer groups and stereotypes of masculinity that may foster attitudes toward school and society that put boys at a disadvantage compared with girls.

One of the programs that the president sees as a model, “Becoming a Man” in Chicago, has already received excellent marks for reducing delinquency and producing college graduates. The name of the program, however, harkens back to an earlier era. Aren’t boys becoming men whether or not they achieve academic success? And aren’t we really interested in their becoming successful and morally responsible students and members of society?

In our quest to promote success for males, we may overlook girls of color who, while doing better in many venues, still suffer academically in comparison to both white males and white females. It is appalling that 17 percent of black male youths have been expelled from school compared with 1 percent of white males, but the fact that 8 percent of black females have also been expelled, in contrast to less than 1 percent of white females, is quite remarkable as well. And black girls are more likely than their white counterparts to drop out of school. This despite the fact that virtually no national initiatives are devoted to empowering young black girls.

At the same time, why not investigate some of the protective factors that allow some young black women to have greater success in school than their male counterparts? In our attempt to broaden opportunities for women, we have encouraged girls to develop characteristics such as speaking up, being assertive, and stepping out of typical gender roles. It might just be that girls are doing something right and that boys could learn from them.

We need to address the very real obstacles boys of color face in school and society, where they are often shortchanged and subjected to discipline policies that contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline. Education policy is no real substitute for social measures aimed at alleviating poverty and joblessness that plague communities of color.

Finally, we might ask boys (and their educators) to question some entrenched ideas about gender and masculinity that not only impede their academic success, but also do little to advance gender and racial equality among our young people.

Events

Budget & Finance Webinar Leverage New Funding Sources with Data-Informed Practices
Address the whole child using data-informed practices, gain valuable insights, and learn strategies that can benefit your district.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Classroom Technology Webinar
ChatGPT & Education: 8 Ways AI Improves Student Outcomes
Revolutionize student success! Don't miss our expert-led webinar demonstrating practical ways AI tools will elevate learning experiences.
Content provided by Inzata
Classroom Technology K-12 Essentials Forum Tech Is Everywhere. But Is It Making Schools Better?
Join us for a lively discussion about the ways that technology is being used to improve schools and how it is falling short.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

College & Workforce Readiness Q&A How One District Ensures That Career Education Leads to Jobs for Students
The director of Pittsburgh's career and technical education program outlines how she approaches community partnerships.
2 min read
Students make measurements to wood to add to a tiny home project during their shop class at Carrick High School in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Dec. 13, 2022.
Students work on a project to build a tiny home during a shop class at Carrick High School in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Dec. 13, 2022.
Nate Smallwood for Education Week
College & Workforce Readiness Everyone Earns an Industry Certification and Most Go to College in This CTE Program
Pittsburgh Public Schools' CTE students are graduating with at least one industry certification and a confirmed post-graduation plan.
10 min read
Tenth graders, TaeLyn Johnson, left, and Dilana Gray, right, practice on a dummy during their EMS class at Westinghouse High School in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Dec. 13, 2022.
Tenth graders TaeLyn Johnson, left, and Dilana Gray practice EMS skills during a career and technical education class at Westinghouse High School in Pittsburgh on Dec. 13, 2022.
Nate Smallwood for Education Week
College & Workforce Readiness The May Internship: Can It Help Schools Cure Senioritis?
A full-time, monthlong internship is helping seniors stay engaged at a Baltimore school.
5 min read
Anna Trudeau, 18, a senior at Friends School of Baltimore, works as an intern at the calcium channels lab at the University of Maryland School of Medicine Department of Physiology in Baltimore, Md., on May 18, 2023. Friends School of Baltimore has seniors spend their final month of high school working at an internship.
Anna Trudeau, a senior at Friends School of Baltimore, takes a break from her internship at a laboratory at the University of Maryland School of Medicine Department of Physiology in Baltimore, Md., on May 18, 2023. Twelfth graders at her school spend their final month of high school working at full-time internships.
Matt Roth for Education Week
College & Workforce Readiness Opinion The Nation Is Still at Risk: The Urgency of Workforce Preparation
The labor market needs education to evolve. Career and technical education has an important role to play, writes Anthony P. Carnevale.
Anthony P. Carnevale
5 min read
Illustration of a figure walking through a landscape of vocational iconography.
Liana Nagieva/iStock + Vanessa Solis/Education Week