Letters to the Editor
-
Debunked?
Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this particular article (and Traister's embrace of it as evidence that there is no boy crisis) is the fact that it exhibits the very kind of elitism that I thought upper-middle-class white feminists had abandoned long ago.
Reading the original article in the Washington Post, I was struck by the authors' language: "our boys," they write, are not in crisis. It quickly became apparent that by "our boys," the authors were referring to those attending the "wealthiest schools," those matriculating at "Ivy League colleges," and so forth. At one point, the authors concede that if there is indeed a boy crisis, it afflicts blacks and rural whites.
Fine. But this doesn't make it any less of a crisis, any less of a problem. It certainly doesn't "debunk" the problem, as Traister seems to suggest. It merely identifies it with far greater specificity. That the boys who are having trouble are not the offspring of elite academics should worry us more, not less. These kids have precious little access to the kind of services, educational or otherwise, available to boys -- and girls -- living in upper-middle class white suburbia.
To Traister, and the authors of the Washington Post article: don't be too quick to dismiss something as a "crisis" if you have trouble identifying with the group or groups whom it truly describes. "The Real Boy Crisis" might have been a better title for the Washington Post article. But "The Myth of the 'Boy Crisis'"? Yikes -- welcome to George Bush's America, where if you're white and rich, things are going just great. And if not? Tough luck.