Hopeful Girls, Troubled Boys: Race and Gender Disparity in Urban Education

In this book, Dr. Lopez evaluates low-income Dominican, Haitian, and West Indian students to see how gender differentiates their views of society, school, family, and the workforce. Dr. Lopez is "a subject from within": a Dominican-American who was raised under the same circumstances as her subjects. Progressive academics have argued for years that thinkers have not produced enough theory that juggles issues of race, class, and gender. Here, those three issues are tackled. Equally important, race and class are taken into account and gender is the primary lens of analysis. This is rightfully called gender studies as both men and women are examined. Dr. Lopez observes a homogenous school, thus this book makes almost no comparisons between Caribbean Americans and European Americans. Gender aside, this book looks at the sad state of public schools in many parts of America. Post-911, Giuliani has been embraced as "America's Mayor." However, this books points to the former mayor's assault against NYC public schools and illustrates why Black and Latino residents have historically resented him. In the school examined, teachers don't have offices. The walls are crumbling. The students don't even get textbooks. There is absolutely no mention of extracurriculars, so my guess is that they don't have any. There is more emphasis put on students' going through metal detectors than getting a good, critical education. Teachers and security guards spend more time ripping off boys' hats than making sure that they learn or feel safe. The most important point of this book is how Dr. Lopez shows that gender matters. Women may not like police, but they are not physically assaulted by them. Women are given responsibilities at home and ordered to submit to authority and learn to exhibit the habits that teachers reward. Women value education even when they are getting shoddy ones. Women get away with antics in the class for which men are severely punished. Many progressive readers may feel that Dr. Lopez is preaching to the choir. Race and gender are not separate worlds; they are categories that sit by each other constantly informing each other. For those who don't know this, this will be a shocker. For those who do, much of what Dr. Lopez says is nothing new. The second chapter which concerns men's fears of physical violence and women's fears of sexual stereotyping is nothing new, again. Dr. Lopez has a purposeful project of challenging those thinkers who would say it's their own fault if Caribbean-American men and women don't succeed in American schools. I applaud her for that. However, she states that Caribbean boys don't study because they are insulted by the simpleness of the books they are given. I highly doubt that every unsuccessful male student does poorly because he is not challenged. Surely, some male students, of whatever ethnicity, would get As knowing that a 4.0 GPA from a bad school would still give them accesses to college adm