Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity

by Ann Arnett Ferguson

Statistics show that black males are disproportionately getting in trouble and being suspended from the nation's school systems. Based on three years of participant observation research at an elementary school, Bad Boys offers a richly textured account of daily interactions between teachers and students to understand this serious problem. Ann Arnett Ferguson demonstrates how a group of eleven- and twelve-year-old males are identified by school personnel as "bound for jail" and how the youth construct a sense of self under such adverse circumstances. The author focuses on the perspective and voices of pre-adolescent African American boys. How does it feel to be labeled "unsalvageable" by your teacher? How does one endure school when the educators predict one's future as "a jail cell with your name on it?" Through interviews and participation with these youth in classrooms, playgrounds, movie theaters, and video arcades, the author explores what "getting into trouble" means for the boys themselves. She argues that rather than simply internalizing these labels, the boys look critically at schooling as they dispute and evaluate the meaning and motivation behind the labels that have been attached to them. Supplementing the perspectives of the boys with interviews with teachers, principals, truant officers, and relatives of the students, the author constructs a disturbing picture of how educators' beliefs in a "natural difference" of black children and the "criminal inclination" of black males shapes decisions that disproportionately single out black males as being "at risk" for failure and punishment.
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Bad Boys is a powerful challenge to prevailing views on the problem of black males in our schools today. It will be of interest to educators, parents, and youth, and to all professionals and students in the fields of African-American studies, childhood studies, gender studies, juvenile studies, social work, and sociology, as well as anyone who is concerned about the way our schools are shaping the next generation of African American boys.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Sociology, Race, Teaching, Academic, Social Justice

296 pages, Paperback

First published June 12, 2000

Reviews

[christine✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ann Arnett Ferguson’s research in Bad Boys deals with, as the subtitle aptly states, “public schools in the making of black masculinity.” While including vast amounts of qualitative interviews with the African American boys she encountered at this school, Ferguson intends to argue that the structural factors in these boys’ lives affect their individual academic and social standing and, in large part, their futures. In doing this, Ferguson focuses on the institutional practices of the school through a discussion of school rules and enforcement as well as through punishing practices, and she also looks at the dominant cultural representations that shape the way teachers see these boys and the way the boys see themselves. She emphasizes the ways that gender works in school practices as well as how gender is inseparable from race. While Ferguson effectively argues the interaction between the structural determinants of institutional practices and cultural representations that enforce norms of race and gender on the lives of these African American males, she neglects the issue of how position in a system of social class stratification affects the boys’ experiences.

[Josephine Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sociology can have a tendency to dehumanize its subjects, but that was not the case with Bad Boys. Ferguson is robust in her data and analysis, but she weaves anecdotes, personal observations, and a genuine sense of care into the entire book. She crafts a compelling narrative without compromising the academic nature of her work in the slightest. This is a robust exploration of the many factors that contribute to the school to prison pipeline, and how schools uphold institutional racist stereotyping of Black males specifically. It’s deeply informative and illuminating. Highly recommend.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

i'm still percolating on this... powerful ideas that i haven't put together yet. Smacks of the 1990s a bit, but really gets to the heart of a lot of my misgivings about how my own teaching was tightly connected to an established and unimpeachable hierarchy of power. Schools are gross places for kids to try and become their own person, a fact that is seriously distressing to me.

[Robert Owen · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Bad Boys” is the made-for-lay-person summary of Ann Ferguson’s ethnographic study of institutional racism in public schools. The work recounts the disheartening school experiences of several black boys attending Rosa Parks Elementary School in Arcadia, California, and seeks to demonstrate how the school’s (often unconsciously) racist attitudes contribute to the perpetuation of black disadvantage and the criminalization of young black men. According to her thesis, in that schools approach black boys with attitudes that anticipate “likely” future life failure (including joblessness, criminality and violence) they create the means by which that very outcome is achieved. Low institutional expectations combined with a strongly disciplinary, zero-tolerance ethos that punishes rather than accommodates different black cultural norms contribute to “sap the life and hope” out of young black male victims who enter elementary school eager to learn, but by the fourth grade, have been transformed into cynical and embittered “underperformers” who stand clearly on a path to life failure.

The work suffers from its failure to consider alternative hypotheses to explain the behaviors Ferguson describes. She starts out looking for institutional racism and so, not surprisingly, institutional racism is precisely what she finds. In ignoring alternative theories of class - the parenting strategies of poor and working class parents being at odds with schools that are organized to accommodate parenting strategies more commonly favored by middle-class parents – and focusing exclusively on race, her work loses credibility. This is particularly so in that the text of the book gives several tantalizing clues to the possibility of class-based explanations. In her description of the neighborhoods that feed the school, for example, she explains that most of her “bad boys” come from the poor (predominantly black) neighborhoods surrounding the campus as opposed to the namby-pamby monolith of white students who are bussed in from outlying middle-class neighborhoods. That she should disagree with these class-based theories is fine, but in that she simply ignores them in a rush to demonstrate racial bias taints the book with the odor of race-theory favoring confirmation bias.

This is truly a shame as there are likely valuable insights to be garnered from the observations she presents; however, these are obscured by her tendency to rationalize behavior in her young black subjects that, by any objective evaluation, should not and cannot be tolerated in a productive school environment. While she goes to great lengths to offer an explanation for why her subjects act out in class or engage in fights on the playground, she tends to ignore as irrelevant the fact that, regardless of the cause, disruptive children are…..well…..disruptive and, in being disruptive, are less likely to be successful in school. Frankly, the kids she highlights in her book sound like every teacher’s nightmare and if I was the parent of a “well-behaved” student sufficiently engaged to want to learn stuff, I would resent the monopoly these disruptive kids would try to place on the teacher’s time. While I can certainly see that if the cultural norms imparted in the homes of poor and working class black children that encourage, for example, fighting as an acceptable means of resolving conflicts that the child who is sent to an institution that punishes fighting is going to have problems; yet one cannot help but ask what alternative responses to children who do get into fights are expected from the institution. Further, her celebration of this supposed racial “cultural” difference completely ignores the fact that the same norm exists for children in white poor and working class families, with, presumably (one is left to presume as she doesn’t address it), the same resulting unfavorable consequence on the white students who then fight.

If anything, this book highlights the paradoxes and hypocrisies inherent in the contemporary black intellectual ideology that holds race to be the fundamental, irreducible unit of appropriate sociological inquiry. That any student, regardless of their race, who is inculcated in a body of cultural norms at odds with the expectation of the institution is not going to do well seems not even to have occurred to her. If race is somehow a factor in institutional disadvantage (and I am certainly willing to be convinced that it is) her failure to control for the effects of socioeconomic class in her study renders the insights she shares questionable.

[Jocardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I lead a book club called Equity Book Club. This was our inaugural read and what a way to start. Ferguson uses ethnography to delve into the lives of the young Black men at Rosa Parks and shows how their lives are affected by gender, race, and socioeconomics. It's a great read and the discussion that followed was amazing.

If you would like to sign up for our book club, email at equitybookclub01 AT gmail DOT com. The focus of our book club is to look at inequity in education and highlight the intersectionality of race, gender, socioeconomics, and sexuality. We meet every third Thursday at 7:30 via a Google Meet.

Our next read is Dude, You're a Fag by CJ Pascoe.

Here is a list of the books we will read. The links are to independent booksellers and specifically The Lit Bar (http://www.thelitbar.com/) a Black female owned book store located in the Bronx. It is also the only bookstore in the entire borough of the Bronx. If I couldn't find the book there, I searched Book Culture (https://www.bookculture.com/). This is another independent bookstore located in NYC.

Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique W. Morris (https://bookshop.org/books/pushout-th...)

Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928 - David Wallace Adams (https://bookshop.org/books/education-...)

Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do by Jennifer L. Eberhardt, PhD. (https://bookshop.org/books/biased-unc...)

For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education (https://bookshop.org/books/for-white-...)

Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side. (https://bookshop.org/books/ghosts-in-...)

Why Do All The Black Kids Sit Together in the Cafeteria? By Bevery Daniel Tatum, PHD (https://bookshop.org/books/why-are-al...)

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen (https://bookshop.org/books/lies-my-te...)

The Trouble with Black Boys…and other Reflections on Public Education (https://bookshop.org/books/the-troubl...

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short and to the point. Ferguson does not attempt to color her language or present the facts (and there are quite a few, not simply the overgeneralized narrative of the "school-to-prison" pipeline) as as matter-of-fact conclusion. What is considerably done well is the manner in which she is able to merge the academic and social aspects of the effects schooling has on the identify development of young adolescent Black males. Far too often, the story is told through a cumbersome list of statistics and details; however, I find that not to be the case here.

I don't personally have a critique of her book on the pedagogical side. More or less, Ferguson leaves one wondering just how to incorporate her finely crafted points on the toxicity of "classic American schooling" on Black males. The effects of which, she then argues, are often not seen until years later after such inherent and natural tendencies and aspects of their being have been sufficiently repressed by the individual children. What role do teachers play and how are we complicit in this demonizing (even implicitly) of an entire group of children as a result of a socially constructed notion of race and/or gender? I look forward to grappling with this in the years to come, especially within my classroom and practice.

[Megan Dunakey · Rating 2 out of 5]

From the acknowledgments: His fanatical insistence that I purge pretentious academic jargon and obtuse prose from the text has hopefully made it accessible to the wide audience I hope to reach.

I read a lot of non fiction books, because I simply love learning. While reading this book, there were so many times where I thought, what the heck is she even talking about? So much of it felt unnecessary. I mainly mean the language. If this was written today, I would’ve thought it was cooked up by Chat GPT.

Also, the only solution she has is to completely uproot and change the education system? Our country is too big and too diverse for our education system. We know. Plus, our country makes sure that EVERYONE goes. This is a problem that only America suffers from unfortunately. And because of this, there hasn’t been a real change to the education system.

I really wish her data would’ve come from more than just one school. So much of her work was rooted in the background of being poor or coming from single mother households. I teach a lot of black students who do not come from these backgrounds at all. It just felt like a one size fits all approach, unfortunately.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ferguson spent three years working and observing in a mixed race school, located in a predominantly Black neighborhood. White students were bussed in from the surrounding areas which all had higher socioeconomic status and wealth. It was interesting to read the opinions of both staff and students regarding the role of education and school, suffering stereotypes about the Black and White students, how punishment was meted out, and the disadvantage White teachers had by not living in the neighborhood because their ideas of what student home life did not equal Ferguson’s assessment. Which was further complicated by the White teacher’s reluctance or refusal to make home visits to their students.
My only compliant is that I would’ve loved some stronger character development in this ethnography.

[Sage Αναστασία · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is astonishing. Everything from the information to the methodology to the in-depth explanations of key points was perfectly written in a captivating story format that still used data to back up her arguments. Bad Boys is an eye-opening look into how many Black boys relate to schooling and how schools are set up against Black children. I used excerpts of this book in my undergraduate thesis, and I'm glad to have finally gotten the chance to read the rest of it. I'll likely read it again one day in the future, as the book had so many important points. Thank you to Ann Ferguson for this gem!

[Tatania Campbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely amazing & profound book. it is true, statistically, that Black boys are getting into serious trouble way more often than their White counterparts. Even 23 years later, this book is still 100% relevant. this should be read by all, not just those in education. this furthers my claim that racism is an American culture, not a thing of the past. racism is so deeply ingrained into our society that is manifests itself in the most “unlikely” places, like schooling. Black kids are so disproportionately punished as a result of that. anyways, that’s my rant. i really liked this book, it was super insightful and helped to more craft the type of teacher i want to be. 10/10 recommend

[Jonathan Lothspeich · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book about the intersection of race and education, with an emphasis on the different responses to disobedience and punishment found in public schools. I particularly thought the dichotomy between administrative and student perspectives presented in the text was an interesting point that is often overlooked, as students' opinions are often ignored in policy studies.

[John Byrnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ferguson's ethnography covers the middle school experiences of boys labeled by their schools as threats and those labelled successful. Although there are still questions after a read, and less consideration of female students than later ethnographies by Morris or Crenshaw discuss, this is a compelling and thoughtful study that centers the voices and experiences of children and families.

[Stephanie D · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a model for how to write an ethnography that is at once rigorously academic and engaging, human, and compassionate. An incredibly important work.

[Miriam Larson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every teacher should read this book. I am deeply grateful to Dr Ferguson for her dedication to observing with clear sight, listening to youth with an open mind, and sharing with such insight.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think reading for my wife's sociology class is making me depressed.

[Lawson Schultz · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for class

[Gloria · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is based on a 3 year study of an integrated school in California during the 1990's. What quickly becomes apparent is the school is not really integrated at all. White students are brought to the school by bus. But those in the gifted program (mostly white) are then bused to another school for part of the day. The African-American students are treated in such an appalling way. There is a punishment room where transgressors are sent to spend part of the day. There is a separate small room for in school suspensions. Teachers believe that are unbiased but it is clear that they are harming these children. This is the second book I have read concerning integration gone bad. It's a shame that we have tried to fix the division in our society by putting the onus on our children. When in fact these communities should not be segregated in the first place forcing the integration to take place in our schools. As a society we must begin to act like the grown ups and recognize how divided our communities are and seek real, true integration and equality for all not burden our children with an illusion of equality that they know if false.

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

A read for any future teacher. In fact, a read for anyone. The systematic criminalization and tracking of young black men into that place in society needs to be recognized and approached by those that will mentor any child in the future. Ferguson does a good job of examining the boys, their communities, and school in an objective light to bring about her conclusions that the role these boys play in school is one shaped by many factors out of their control. She confesses that proposing a solution to the problem is a difficult one until the entire public educational system is recognized as inherently flawed, but I agree with her small suggestions of smaller classes, mutual respect between educators and pupils, and antiracist training for teachers.

[Cyndi Lu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was both insightful and engaging. Ferguson was able to balance her own experiential research with a strong theoretical framework, illustrating the importance of letting experience and theory work to shape knowledge. She also reached out from the school she was studying into the community and families affected. The book really gave me a starting point for some of the research I have been stuck on. Highly recommended.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

i read this book for my sociology of the inner city child class. it was so poignant for me, especially how, as an educational system, we set boys up from an early age to be incarcerated. most inner city schools somewhat resemble prisons, either in physical make-up or in the way discipline is carried out through the administration.

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book for my summer education class, it was an okay read. The best part is the sub-chapter "Mothering" which a women retelling her experience with the police for spanking her boy when he was out after dark in a bad neighborhood. there is some good insight in the book, but I felt like the author should have had more of her own voice in it.

[Sonia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book sounded fascinating - and the idea that the very schools that are supposed to provide a way for children, in this case African American boys, to succeed in society are instead tracking them for failure. It was a very tough read - you can tell the author is a researcher but the ideas and results are thought provoking.

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Teachers, politicians, and police officers should all have to read this. Everyone should at least read the "Mothering" section of this book. Shocking and sad, I'm glad that I read this before beginning a teaching career so that I'm more aware of the obstacles black males face in our schools and society, especially so that I do not subconsciously contribute to the problem.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent ethnography that demonstrates how even an elementary school can inscribe criminal identities onto African American boys because their behavior does not fit into an implicit set of normative behaviors that grow out of middle class, white experience and expectations.

[Adelaide · Rating 5 out of 5]

ED 161: Sociology and Anthropology of the School. The spoken word/poem/oral history of the black mother being punished by the white system for her way of raising her son was incredibly haunting. This book was a good reminder that good intentions matter very little when they lead to racist outcomes.

[Ferentz]

Surprised that this one snuck by me when it came out. Reads well alongside Noguera's work.

[Tama · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ingriguing! An ethnographic insight into Rosa Parks Elementary School. Doesn't every school have a punishing room?

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good look at the culture of schools and the effect it has on those who do not share that culture.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

The points are well-taken, but not new to me. The writing is not good.

[Jam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing ethnography.