Something odd about this coverage…
Last week’s Schott Foundation report on the academic crisis among black males — and yes, for this group, it is a crisis — generally got passed over by the national press but picked up by regional papers from cities nicked by the “worst of” lists.
The Detroit News article is here. Indianapolis coverage here. More Michigan reporting here. Illinois news here. New York here.
Enough already. You get the idea. Black boys are in trouble. Everyone agrees there’s a need to redouble efforts, but nobody has any fresh ideas.
But the key question to ask is the one that wasn’t raised by a single reporter: Why are black girls doing reasonably well by comparison? Black girls, in contrast to the boys, get pretty good grades, go to college at decent rates and graduate from college at very good rates, earning degrees as twice the rate of men. Here’s a chart with 2007 high school graduation rates run by Edweek. Girls’ rates are on the right:
How can that be? The girls come from the same homes, the same schools, the same neighborhoods as their brothers and neighbors? Seems like a question worth asking, and yet … silence. Taking on that question would mean shifting the issue from race to gender, which means switching to “controversial” grounds. Reporters pressed to move to the next story know they can write quickly and confidently about race, but not about gender. Therefore, the obvious gets ignored, except by a few brave researchers. Consider this from the Consortium for Chicago School Research.
July 30th, 2008 at 9:15 am
[...] coverage… 30 Jul 2008 | 07:57 am | Category: Uncategorized unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptBlack girls, in contrast to the boys, [...]
July 30th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
[...] News » News Something odd about this coverage…2008-07-30 14:31:30Redouble news here. Enough already. You get the idea. Black boys are in trouble. [...]
July 31st, 2008 at 8:47 am
HI Richard, I too would like to see more gender coverage. Re, “The girls come from the same homes, the same schools, the same neighborhoods as their brothers and neighbors?” - on its face, this is true, but each of these institutions can affect girls and boys differently. For example, boys are differentially affected by absent fathers (historically, the gender gap in college completion first started opening up among single mom families), and the same kind of neighborhood can produce radically different outcomes for girls and boys (see some of the MTO studies).
July 31st, 2008 at 12:31 pm
I’ve looked at the Consortium for Chicago Schools report. So, the one reference to gender stated that there was no difference in college success by gender. The only issue was that males did not take courses that qualified them to get into the same colleges as females, therefore that was why there were more females in college. Was there something else related to gender in this report that I may have missed?
August 2nd, 2008 at 9:46 am
[...] Whitmire raises an important question: Why do black girls do so well? Black girls, in contrast to the boys, get pretty good grades, go to college at decent rates and [...]
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:44 pm
[...] News » News Something odd about this coverage…2008-08-02 22:44:48News ideas. … Michigan reporting here. Illinois news here. Enough already. You [...]
August 4th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
[...] A quick look at the chart above shows that as bad as young black males are doing in school, their sisters–born of the same parents, raised in the same homes, and eating the same foods–are actually doing fairly well. Why are black girls doing reasonably well by comparison? Black girls, in contrast to the boys, get pretty good grades, go to college at decent rates and graduate from college at very good rates, earning degrees as twice the rate of men. _Source_via_JoanneJacobs [...]
August 13th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
The loss of traditional morals has its price. Dad had a purpose in the family, it turns out. Crosby Stills and Nash sang “Love the one you’re with” and adopting that philosophy turned into…this.
We sowed the whirlwind in the 1960s.