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Dr. Pedro Noguera is a professor of education at Harvard University. This paper published in In Motion Magazine June 2, 1997.
This article is published by In Motion Magazine as a series of linked articles which can be downloaded in segments. All sections can be reached from this page, or readers can follow from one section to another. The portrait of Dr. Noguera is by freelance photographer Kathy Sloane (kataphoto@aol.com).
Part 3
Responding to the Black Male Problem
In a probing inquiry into the problem of youth violence, Greenberg and Schnieder (1993) ask the following: "Young Black males is the answer, but what was the question?" The phrasing of the title to their paper as a question is not intended to be merely rhetorical. Rather, by playing on what has become construed as a natural association between young Black males and violence, the authors hope to compel their readers to reexamine their assumptions. This they accomplish through an analysis of the many factors (environmental, economic, etc.) influencing the incidence of homicide in five New Jersey cities. In so doing, they demonstrate that the way in which a question is posed strongly influences the framing of the answer.
By focusing almost exclusively on race and gender, other factors which may be relevant to understanding the causes of social problems like crime, drug trafficking, student performance or violence, often go ignored. Most important among the omitted factors are the influence of class and geographic location. Many, though not all, of the problems cited as afflicting Black males are most prevalent in poverty stricken urban areas. These are typically communities which lack a sustainable local economy, where community institutions are weak or barely existent, and where environmental degradation and an absence of social services are primary characteristics of the social landscape.
However, the problems facing Black males and Black youth generally are increasingly not discussed in the context of their interaction with these types of conditions. Instead, race and gender are employed as explanatory categories, resulting in an explanation of the crisis facing Black males which focuses almost exclusively on cultural rather than structural factors. For the scholars and writers who advocate this perspective, these cultural factors can include the matriarchal Black family (Glazer and Moynihan, 1963; Kunjufu, 1990); oppositional attitudes and behavior (Ogbu, 1988; Solomon, 1992; Fordham, 1991); or the violent and destructive culture of inner city streets (Anderson, 1990). Such explanations tend to reinforce and perpetuate many of the negative images and stereotypes that have historically been associated with Black males and Black people generally. In the past, propagation of negative stereotypes could be understood as the by-product of racist and racially biased theories of Black behavior. However, in the current, period these ideas are being produced by a wide assortment of journalists, scholars and political actors, many of whom perceive themselves as sympathetic to the plight of Black males, and some of whom also happen to share their race and gender.
Given the history of exclusion and given the persistence of negative images associated with Black males, good intentions often are not enough to prevent the marginalization and stigmatization of Black males even in programs that were theoretically designed to help them. Particularly if efforts designed to help Black youth are based on the assumption that race and gender are the key attributes which must be addressed in order to help them, such efforts may only overlook other important factors related to the social and economic conditions in which young people live which have tremendous bearing on their behavior and attitudes. Moreover, such formulations may also inadvertently reify the stereotypes and images that have been instrumental in maintaining the subordination of poor Black youth in the innercity.
The efforts undertaken by a middle school in an economically depressed section of West Oakland to address the problem of disruptive students illustrates how an intervention designed to help Black males can end up producing the opposite effect. (3) I had been working with the school as a research consultant on a school reform project and was approached by the principal to assist in devising a strategy for addressing discipline problems at the school. Teachers had been complaining for some time to the site and district administration that they had too many disruptive students and that many of them felt unsafe at school. The teachers argued that the disruptive students were preventing others from being educated because a few individuals took up most of the class time. The district administration had been pressuring the school to improve its test scores for some time, but was unable to get cooperation from the teachers because they insisted that the disciplinary issues should be addressed first. Finally, in an attempt at responding to the faculty's concerns, the school was offered an additional teacher who would be assigned to work exclusively with the disruptive students.
Teachers were asked to put forward the names of their most difficult students. The principal then created a list of the names which came up most frequently, and these students were selected for placement in the new class. Not surprisingly, given the history of behavioral problems at the school, all twenty-one of the students selected were African American males. To address their special needs and to insure that the students would be helped, the district assigned a young Black male teacher, who was specially trained in Afrocentric education, to teach this newly created class. Once established, the class was publicized as a unique and "innovative educational opportunity" which in addition to providing a culturally enriched curriculum, would also provide work experience, mentors and other special services for its students. If successful, the district administration planned to use the class as a model at other schools throughout the school district. (4 )
Despite these efforts, it became clear within a relatively short period of time that the class was a complete failure. Trapped together in the same classroom for four and a half hours a day, and isolated from the rest of the school, the students soon began to resent their placement in the special class. Much of this resentment was taken out on the teacher, who had grown increasingly short tempered and authoritarian toward his class as the frustration of the students escalated. He also became extremely resentful toward the district administration once it became clear that much of the support that had been promised either would not be delivered, or would take some time before becoming available. During my own observations of the classroom over the six weeks that it remained in operation, it was apparent that tensions between the teacher and students were high, and both parties complained openly about being unfairly trapped with each other.
What was perhaps most interesting about this pilot disciplinary program was that when I interviewed other teachers at the school about how their classes were going now that the disruptive students had been removed, several pointed out there were now a number of students who previously had not given much trouble but had now emerged as new trouble makers once those who had been identified as disruptive had been removed. Some of the teachers even suggested that what was needed was at least one more separate classroom for the other disruptive students.
Cases such as this one demonstrate clearly how easily a well-intentioned intervention targeted at a particular group of students can degenerate into a dumping ground for individual students who are seen as difficult or even undesirable. Without any mechanisms or procedures in place to insure that high educational and program standards are maintained, such a program can easily become a convenient way of excluding children with special needs from the educational mainstream. Moreover, there exists a substantial body of research which shows that whenever a group of students are labeled deficient, dysfunctional, disadvantaged or different in any negative way, that there will be a tendency for those students to receive services of inferior quality (Milofsky, 1974; Wilson, 1990). This example also shows that by not addressing the factors that contribute to disruptive behavior, such behavior can resurface among other students.
The prevalence of such examples also makes it essential that there be an examination of the potential dangers associated with overemphasizing race and gender in explaining or responding to social problems in schools. Many of the initiatives undertaken to address the needs of Black males may further isolate and exclude Black males from college preparatory classes and other academic opportunities. The call for separate programs to educate and serve the needs of Black males can undermine efforts to assure equal treatment in education because these can be interpreted as being warranted because this segment of the population is more dangerous or difficult to handle. Even if the rationale is never articulated, programs that allow for some degree of separation may be supported because they serve as a means to spare the rest of the student population from the contaminating influence of difficult students. For these reasons, those who call for separate programs out of the belief that this is indeed the best way to serve Black youth must be aware that such actions can run the risk of inadvertently isolating the young people served and reinforcing negative images and stereotypes.
