Amazing Post on Alas, a Blog Re: "The Boy Crisis"

If I post excerpts, some of you (you know who you are) will skip the article, so here's the link; read it whole:

The Boy Crisis Part 2: Boy Brains and Girl Brains

Did you finish it? All of it? Good stuff.

I think Ampersand's post was amazing and I wanted to add one thing. If the "boy brain vs girl brain" issue is largely one of class and race, what is it that makes journalists and others define this issue as one of gender? I think that the incredible discouragement of young black and Latino (and Native American, though I know quite a bit less about this demographic- they seem understudied or under-published-about) men and boys from any kind of academic future is very much connected to a gendered and racialized system of compensation. If black women are the ones going to college, rather than men of their race, these are people less likely to be competing with white guys (and white women) for better jobs. Black women who are college graduates are likely to be shoved into glorified administrative roles, fairly permanently in many cases. (Exempting the "elite" Ivy grads and such.) Black men are hard for white folks to place in the corporate hierarchy. They don't "belong," because of their gender, in admin positions; we, as a society, seem to have a hard time placing men of any color in such feminized roles. So, where to "put" these potential "competitors"? Better not to have to cross that bridge at all. Better to see them drop out of school.

If we call attention to the race and class issue at play here, we expose the racialized and gendered structures still very much alive in the American workplace.