The Left tells men to be more like their sisters. The Right says to be more like your father. Neither invocation is helpful.   ~ Richard Reeves

Prior posts in this series, Parts 2.1 and 2.2, described the eleven problems and conditions faced by boys and men identified by Richard Reeves in Of Boys and Men.  In addition, Richard Reeves courageously calls out the misguided narratives espoused by the political Left and Right in naming and framing the boys and men’s crisis. These narratives are an overriding 12th problem.

Let’s first address what the Left gets wrong about boys and men in this fourth post of the series.

1. The Left tends to pathologize masculinity.

The Left tends to denigrate masculinity, often under the banner of “toxic.”  “Toxic masculinity” is rarely defined.  In current use, it signals disdain for any male behavior that the user disapproves of.  A toxic male may be blamed for everything – mass shootings, online trolling, Brexit, and refusing to wear a mask during the pandemic.

According to sociologist Carol Harrington, the phrase “toxic masculinity” was used in no more than 20 scholarly articles until around 2015; but by 2017, there were thousands of mentions of “toxic masculinity,” mainly in the mainstream media.

Reeves and other researchers (psychologists and sociologists) of American culture believe “toxic masculinity” is a counterproductive term.

It is a bad idea to send a cultural signal to half of the population that there may be something intrinsically wrong with them. ~ Richard Reeves

What does the General Public Think?

Harrington reports that nine in ten men and women describe themselves as either “completely” or “mostly” masculine or feminine.*

Fifty percent of American men and 30% of American women now think society punishes men for just acting like men (3 in 5 Republicans and about 1 in 4 Democrats – a significant difference along partisan lines).

Fewer than a third of American women now describe themselves as a feminist. But in a survey (2019) that appeared in Ipsos, 48% of Democratic women adopted the feminist label compared to just 13% of Republican women.

In a 2018 YouGov poll of women who did not identify as feminists, 48% of those women said feminists were too extreme, 47% said [current] feminism does not represent true feminism, and 24% said feminists are anti-men.

Bottomline:

Masculinity is not a pathology; it is quite literally a fact of life. ~ Richard Reeves

2. The Left sees the causes of the crisis as individual and not structural.

Pundits on the political Left couch male problems as individual failings of one kind or another, rather than a result of structural challenges.

“The problems of boys and men are structural in nature, rather than individual, but are rarely treated as such,” according to Reeves. The problem with men is typically framed as a problem of men. Men should be fixed, one man or boy at a time. Harrington says the term “toxic masculinity” focuses attention on the character flaws of individual men rather than structural problems.

For those on the political Left, victim-blaming is permitted when it comes to men.  ~ Richard Reeves

Individualist Approach is Wrong

This individualist approach is wrong.  Boys are falling behind in school and college because the educational system is structured in a way that puts them at a disadvantage.

Men struggle in the labor market because of an economic shift away from traditionally male jobs.

And fathers are dislocated because the cultural role of provider has been hollowed out.

The male malaise is not the result of a mass psychological breakdown but of deep structural challenges. ~Richard Reeves

Men’s Covid Deaths Are Their Own Fault

Globally, men were about 50% more likely to die from Covid. For every 100 deaths among women aged 45-64, there were 184 male deaths. Yet, the higher rate of male deaths received little or no attention from health institutions and the media.  When it was acknowledged, the explanations were that men had preexisting health conditions related to lifestyle factors or were less responsible concerning safety measures.

In short, men’s covid deaths were their own fault. Reeves says this is not true.

The gap in mortality is not explained by sex differences in infection rates or preexisting conditions,

The Difference in Covid Deaths is Biological and Genetic

The difference in Covid deaths between men and women is caused by biology and genetics.  A person with XX vs. XY chromosomes has more functional immunity because of the extra X.  I reported this in my post (April 7, 2020), Why More Men Than Women Die of Covid-19. 

More Gender-Specific Medicine

Reeves advocates for more gender-specific medicine. Marianne Legato (head of the Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine at Columbia University) says, “it is now time to focus on the unique problems of men just the way we have learned to do with women.”**

Reeves says a good step would be to establish an Office of Men’s Health in the Department of Health and Human Services to mirror the existing one for women.

3. The Left is unwilling to acknowledge biological sex differences.

Many conservatives deny the environmental science of climate change.  But many progressives deny the neurosciences of sex differences.  ~ Richard Reeves

This is HUGE

For many progressives, it is now axiomatic that sex differences or behaviors are wholly the results of socialization.  When it comes to masculinity, the main message from the political Left is that men are acculturated into specific ways of behaving (generally bad ways in this version), which can therefore be socialized out of them. But this is simply false. For instance:

Men do not have a higher sex drive because society overly “values” male sexuality.    They have a higher sex drive because they have more testosterone.  ~ Richard Reeves

Women Are Wonderful Effect

There is some evidence that people are more comfortable with the idea of natural differences if women come out ahead in the comparison. In recent years, most scientists identifying natural differences have, if anything, tended to stress the superiority of women. Researchers Alice Eagly and Antonio Mladinic call this the “WoW” (women are wonderful) effect.  Reeves says this approach allows for a discussion of biological differences, but in a way that underlies the pathologies of men and allows a warmer reception among liberal scholars and reviewers.

This is the most dangerous message of all: men are naturally different than women, but only in ways that are bad. ~ Richard Reeves 

Brain Development and Testosterone – Females and Males Are Not the Same

More detail about biological differences between the sexes noted by Reeves will be addressed in Parts 5.1 and 5.2 of this series (upcoming), including:

• Brain development of boys vs. girls and its impact on impulse control, planning, and future orientation — including attention and self-regulation during middle adolescence.
• The tremendous influence of testosterone on aggression, risk-taking, and sex “drive.” Women and men do not have a similar sex drive and it makes perfect evolutionary sense for sexual selection.
• The interplay of nature and nurture and how differences can be magnified or muted by culture.

4. The Left believes that gender inequality only disadvantages women.

The Left believes that gender inequality can only run in one direction – to the disadvantage of women – ignoring disadvantages to men.

The dominant narrative of gender equality is framed almost exclusively in terms of the disadvantages of girls and women. ~ Richard Reeves

Reeves suggests that “our policies are now so poisoned that it has become almost impossible for people on the Left to even discuss the problems of boys and men, let alone devise solutions.”

Policy Bias Against Men***

• In October 2021, the White House Gender Policy Council published a National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality. But no gender inequalities related to boys or men were addressed.  The mission statement of the Policy Council clearly states a policy focus that impacts only women and girls.
• The Council’s report did not mention how women outnumber men in college, except regarding female student debt. There was no mention of the sizable gender gaps in favor of girls in K-12 education.  Regarding discipline, there was no mention of the specific challenges of Black boys, even though they are twice as likely as Black girls to be suspended or expelled.
• White House Covid policy and nearly every think tank and international organization emphasized the negative implications of the pandemic for women while ignoring those for men. The higher risk of death from Covid-19 for men was hardly mentioned.
• The World Economic Forum also describes gender inequality in only one direction based on their methodology. Reeves reports that “no account is taken of domains where women are doing better than men.”

Gender Inequalities Run in Both Directions

The fight for gender equality has historically been synonymous with the battle for and by girls and women, and for a good reason.  But, says Reeves:

“We have reached a point where gender inequalities affecting boys and men have to be treated seriously. Many people on the political Left seem to fear that even acknowledging the problems of boys and men will somehow weaken efforts for women and girls. This is entirely false as a matter of practice and creates a dangerous political dynamic.”

This fear seems difficult for social science academics and the average feminist or “progressive” woman to overcome.  The women who most confront this fear or acknowledge that gender inequalities run in both directions have raised boys.

*Carol Harrington, “What is Toxic Masculinity and Why does it Matter?” Men and Masculinities (July 2020).

 **There are claims from some women’s advocates that medical research and some services (e.g., urological sexual health) have been more focused on men rather than women.  Reeves does not address this. The issue of gender-specific medicine (or the lack thereof) may have multiple threads of truth.  But Legato is the expert in this arena.

***This section mostly repeats Problem #11, “Professional and Academic Bias Against Men” in Problems and Conditions of Boys and Men – Part 2.2 of this series.)

.Boys and men are struggling in the U.S. and across the globe. Part 2.1 of this series described the first six problems and conditions for boys and men identified by Richard Reeves in his book, Of Boys and Men – Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why it Matters, and What to Do About it. This post describes problems 7-11.

7. Demoralization of men – an aspiration gap and a fading ideal

Something in modern culture is producing an aspiration gap between men and women. Many men just seem less ambitious. College women are roughly twice as likely to enroll in study abroad programs as college men. In 2020, amid Covid, the decline in college enrollment for male students was seven times that of female students. As Reeves puts it: “It is not that men have fewer opportunities. It is that they are not taking them.”

Many men seek a fading or obsolete ideal: being a man means being the primary breadwinner for their family (see problems #9 and #10 below). Columnist and author David Brooks: “I come away with the impression that many men are like what Dean Acheson said about Britain after World War II. They have lost an empire but have not yet found a role. They can’t meet the ideal, so demoralization follows.”

Still Searching for a Modern Masculine Ideal

Ambition doesn’t just happen; it must be ignited. The culture is searching for a new, modern masculine ideal, but it is not instilling in many boys the nurturing and emotional skills that may be needed for that search – or needed to thrive as a human being. A system that labels more than a fifth of all boys as developmentally disabled is not giving them a sense of confidence and competence.

8. More men are leading haphazard and lonely lives.

• Roughly 15 percent of men say they have no close friends, up from 3 percent in 1990.
• One in five fathers doesn’t live with his children.
• In 2014, more young men lived with their parents than their wives or partners.
• Wives are twice as likely to initiate divorces as husbands.
• “A large and growing cohort of bored, lonely, poorly educated men is a malevolent force in any society, but it is truly terrifying one in a society addicted to social media and awash in coarseness and guns.” (Scott Galloway, 2022) Radical right-wing politicians “speak” to men who have lost income and dignity.

Hikikomori – Men with Severe Social Withdrawal

An extreme situation of “lonely men” are young men who retreat from society altogether. In Japan, there is a rising number of hikikomori (male shut-ins) – some of whom have been living in one room for years. These men have “severe social withdrawal.” Japanese authorities estimate there are over a half million of these modern-day hermits. Japan is not alone. An organization to work with Italian hikikomori has been established.

Researcher Alan Teo (Oregon Health and Science University) believes many men are on the hikikomori spectrum in this country. “We have a large number of people [men] in the U.S. in their early 20s living in a basement bedroom,” he says. “They are struggling with work, struggling to launch, and may be stuck in an earlier developmental stage.”

Manhood is Fragile

Manhood is defined more by social construction than womanhood, which is why manhood tends to be more fragile than femininity. Womanhood is defined more by biology (reproduction). When was the last “crisis of femininity?” Never. In his book On Men: Masculinity in Crisis (2001), Anthony Clare said, “I learned very early on that what a man does is more important than who he is.”

Manhood Must Be Continuously Won

Manhood is a continuous achievement rather than a single milestone. In many cultures, rites of initiation, often involving physical duress or risk – have marked the transition from a boy to a man. American poet Leonard Kriegel: “In every age, not just our own, manhood was something that had to be won.”

9. Men are unmarriageable

With the rise in female earning power, men need to clear a higher bar to be seen as husband material. Women are more likely to go it alone than partner with a man who is in a weak economic position. In a 2017 survey, 71% of American women said it’s “very important” for a man to support his family financially, and only 25% of men said the same about a woman.

Marriage Rates in Decline

Marriage rates have been on the decline for decades, as reported by Scott Galloway in “A Few(er) Good Men,” October 1, 2021. The sharpest decline has been among poor men. Between 1970 and 2011, the marriage rate for the lowest-earning quartile of men fell by nearly 35%, while the highest quartile fell by less than 15%.

College, Earnings, and Being Acceptable to Women

With fewer men in college, fewer men are acceptable to women as potential mates.

According to David Autor and Melanie Wasserman, the falling earnings power of noncollege males is one reason for their falling marriage rates.

The marriage rate of men aged 40-44 with a high school education or less dropped by more than 20% over the past 40 years, compared to 6% for those with a college education.

Wife Earning More than Husband Explains Marriage Decline

Researcher Marianne Bertrand and her team found that “the aversion to having the wife earn more than the husband explains 29% of the decline of the marriage rate over the last thirty years” (Bertrand et al., “Gender Identity and Relative Income within Households, Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2015).

But Marriage Rates Are More Stable for the Affluent

Marriage data show that women who have achieved the most significant degree of economic independence, with high levels of education and earning potential, are the most likely to get married and stay married. Reeves says that is because they select and marry high-achieving men “who clear the bar” of acceptability.

Women with the highest-earning husbands were most likely to take time off the labor market. These women often choose to stay home with children because their husbands provide the resources, thus revealing their instinctual preferences (and necessity) for caretaking.

Men Are Not Chosen for their Willingness to Stay Home

“With high and rising earnings, college-educated men have remained attractive marital prospects, even for women flourishing in the labor market. These men have not, by and large, become stay-at-home dads,” Reeves observes. These men were not chosen for their capacity or willingness to stay at home. Women who are flourishing in the market choose men who are succeeding just as much, or preferably more.

How Many Women Will Choose This Kind of Man?

How many women will freely choose

• a man who makes less money than them or no money at all, or
• a man who prefers to stay at home with the children?

How many women are choosing that kind of man over a powerful breadwinner at the upper end of the socioeconomic hierarchy? It is irrefutable: high-mate-value women will choose high-mate-value men.

The Erotic-Economic Bargain Throughout History

Gaining sexual access in exchange for the provision of resources is the erotic-economic bargain that has been the infrastructure of mate selection between men and women for thousands of years. With the rise of women’s financial independence and men’s loss of resources, the bargain has become strained under new terms by women; it is seen as an increasingly worse bargain for them. Fewer resources from men equate to less sexual access to women and less marriage.

In sum, women mate (socioeconomically) horizontally and up, and men mate horizontally and down. ~ Richard Reeves

Has Marriage “Worked?”

Reeves asserts that conservatives believe the dependent relationship between husbands and wives is precisely what makes a marriage work as an institution – that marriage is a mechanism for harnessing male energy for positive social ends.

While Reeves acknowledges that marriage has “worked” (more or less) as an institution, he understands how feminists see marriage as an oppressive institution that curtails women’s autonomy. A “dependent” marriage is not a viable future.

High-investment Parenting Marriages (HIP)

Reeves observes that educated Americans have transformed marriage from an institution of economic dependency into a joint venture for the purpose of parenting. Marriage serves primarily as a commitment device for shared investments of time and money in children. He calls these high-investment parenting marriages (HIP). (Richard Reeves, “How to Save Marriage in America,” Atlantic, February 2014).

Are HIP marriages a viable future? What if you do not have or want children? And ultimately, what do we do with the great number of unmarriageable men?

10. Breadwinning and providing have been severely damaged.

The idea of the provider is a major element in the construction of a masculine identity. It is a moral as well as an economic category. ~ David Morgan, Sociologist

Traditional Role Is Dismantled – What’s Next?

Male “breadwinning” and marriageability are directly connected, as described above. But the damage to “man-as-provider” is severe, especially psychologically; it deserves a separate problem category inside the boys and men crisis.

The male role has long been culturally defined as that of provider and based on the economic dependence of mothers on men. This traditional role has been dismantled by the securing of financial independence by women. Men are increasingly unable to fulfill the traditional breadwinner role and do not have a new role to embrace (the “demoralization”).

Husband-as-Breadwinner Expectation Still Persists

Husbands without jobs are at much higher risk of seeing the end of their marriage today than in the past. According to work from Alexandra Killewald, as reported in American Sociological Review:

Expectations of wives’ homemaking may have eroded, but the husband-as-breadwinner norm persists.

To Be a Good Husband, He Must Provide

A study by the Pew Research Center found that 84% of Blacks said that to be a good husband, it is “very important” for a man to be able to provide for his family. Sixty-seven (67%) percent of white respondents agreed.

According to research by David Morgan, four out of five American adults (81%) with a high school education or less still believe that “for a man to be a good husband or partner, being able to support a family financially is very important,” compared to 62% of those with a bachelor’s degree. But what do the women of that 62% believe, and how do they act in the mating market?

Psychological Damage: No Romance, No Sex, No purpose

You cannot unpack the influence of men as providers from the dynamics of mate selection. When men can no longer fulfill the provider role, they are left on the sidelines of romance and sex. General malaise, opioid abuse, suicide, and violence – “deaths of despair” become a plague on the “land of men.” Economically-disadvantaged men do worse in all aspects of life. Their identity, existential purpose, and sexuality are at stake. This is not true for girls and women.

Critical Difference Between Men and Women Left Unsaid

Reeves does not sufficiently emphasize this difference in psychological consequences between men and women. He does not explicitly connect the dots about mate selection, even though it stares him in the face from all the studies he cites. This “undiscussable” was a bridge too far for him; he already was combating flak from the political Left for even writing this book.

11. Professional and academic bias against men

In 2021, President Biden created the White House Gender Policy Council, a successor to the previous Council on Women and Girls, which Donald Trump had abolished. The charge of the new Council is “to guide and coordinate government policy that impacts women and girls.”

But Gender Policy Council Ignored Impact on Boys and Men

In October 2021, the Council published a National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality, but no gender inequalities related to boys or men were addressed.

• There was no mention of how women outnumber men in college, except regarding female student debt.
• There was no mention of the sizable gender gaps in favor of girls in K-12 education.
• There was no mention of the specific challenges of Black boys, even though they are twice as likely as Black girls to be suspended or expelled.

White House Covid Policy Was No Better

White House Covid policy (and most international think tanks) emphasized the pandemic’s negative implications for women and ignored those for men. “The main gender story has been the catastrophic effect on women’s progress,” observes Reeves. Yet, men die at much higher rates than women, even after co-morbidities are accounted for. (See Why More Men Than Women Die of Covid-19.)

More Professional Bias Reported by Reeves

Reeves also reports and explains how the World Economic Forum described gender inequality in only one direction based on their methodology.

But more egregious:

APA Guidelines Do Not Reference any Positive Aspects of Masculinity

The American Psychological Association (APA) in 2018 said: “traditional masculinity was marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression; and is on the whole harmful.”

The APA came under attack from conservative critics, and the APA tweeted that “the guidelines support encouraging positive aspects of traditional masculinity such as courage and leadership.” According to Reeves, this was false. The APA guidelines did not contain a single reference to these positive aspects of masculinity.

APA Guidelines Did Not Recognize Biological Basis for Male Psychology

The guidelines also failed to recognize any biological basis for male psychology.

• Testosterone is not mentioned. As far as the APA is concerned, says Reeves, masculinity is entirely socially constructed. By the time a man reaches adulthood, the report says, “a man will tend to demonstrate behaviors prescribed by his ethnicity, culture, and different constructions of masculinity.”*
• The APA’s complete absence of biology in this report contrasts with the association’s equivalent report on girls and women, which discussed the potential psychological implications of puberty, childbirth, and menopause.

MacArthur Foundation is Another Example of Bias

Reeves says the MacArthur Foundation has a “science aversion” regarding sex and biology. They issued a 47-page report on the latest science of adolescent development for juvenile justice. Despite the enormous differences between teenage girls and boys related to risk-taking and aggression, the report did not make a single reference to sex or gender. Reeves laments: “the fear of sex determinism seems to have led to an unwillingness to engage with, or even acknowledge, the evidence for natural influences on behavior.”

*There is near complete adherence to social constructivist theory asserted by many on the political and academic Left. Manhood may be more defined and “earned” as a social construction, but masculinity is also a biological fact; it just does not rise to the level of female reproduction as a source of purpose and meaning.

Boys and men are struggling in the U.S. and across the globe. Here are the first six problems and conditions for boys and men identified by Richard Reeves in his book, Of Boys and Men – Why The Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What To Do About It .

1. Boys are struggling in the classroom.

American girls are 14 percent more likely to be “school ready” than boys at age 5, controlling for parental characteristics.  By high school, two-thirds of the students in the top 10 percent of the class, ranked by G.P.A., are girls, while roughly two-thirds of the students at the lowest decile are boys.  In 2020, at the 16 top American law schools, not one of the flagship law reviews had a man as editor-in-chief.  Seventy percent (70%) of high school valedictorians are girls (Scott Galloway).  Sixty percent (60%) of all college students are women, and the gap is growing.

2. Men are struggling in the Workplace.

One in three American men with only a high school diploma — five million men — is now out of the labor force.  The most significant drop in employment is among young men aged 25 to 34.  Men who entered the workforce in 1983 will earn about 10 percent less in real terms in their lifetimes than those who started a generation earlier.  Over the same period, women’s lifetime earnings have increased by 33 percent.  Much of the income gains that middle-class American families have enjoyed since 1970 are because of increases in women’s earnings.

Labor Market Down for Men on Four Dimensions

The labor market trajectory for males in the U.S. has turned downward along four dimensions: skills acquisition, employment rates, occupational stature, and real wage levels.  There is a sharp decline in manufacturing jobs that put a high value on physical strength and a rise in service sector jobs.

3. Men are struggling with opioids, suicide, and disproportionate deaths from Covid.

Men account for nearly 75% of all “deaths of despair” — suicide and drug overdoses.

Opioids are not like other drugs, which might be taken to artificially boost confidence, energy, or illumination.  Opioids are taken simply to numb pain – perhaps physical at first, then existential pain.  They are not drugs of inspiration or rebellion but of isolation and retreat.

Men and Suicide

More men than women commit suicide, and the gender gap is widening in advanced economies.  Men are three times more likely to take their own life.  Suicide is now the biggest killer of British men under age 45.

“Useless and Worthless”

Australian researcher Fiona Shand studied the use of the phrases useless and worthless.   “The true cause of the male malaise,” she says, “is not the lack of labor force participation but cultural redundancy.”

In his 2019 essay on masculinity published in Harper’s Magazine, author Barrett Swanson described the common complaint from men, not as depression, but quiet desperation, a gnawing sense of purposelessness.”

Male Covid Deaths

And then there is Covid: for every 100 middle-aged women who died from Covid up to mid-September 2021, there were 184 middle-aged men who died from Covid.  (See my post “Why More Men Than Women Die of Covid“.)

4. Boys are more hindered by challenging environments than girls.

There are important differences between the prospects of boys and girls from less advantaged families.

“Exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods during childhood is particularly harmful to boys,” according to research on intergenerational patterns of poverty and mobility done by Raj Chetty. Boys suffer more from family instability, especially from the exit of biological fathers. Economic and social disadvantage hurts boys more than girls.

Girls in poor neighborhoods and unstable families may be able to climb their way out.  Boys are less likely to do so.  In Canada, boys born into the poorest households are twice as likely to remain poor as their female counterparts.

Boys’ Academic Performance More Affected by Family Background

In American schools, boys’ academic performance is more influenced by family background than girls’ performance.  Boys raised by single parents have lower rates of college enrollment than girls raised by single parents.

Corrosive Intergenerational Cycle

The economic and social disadvantage for boys results in a corrosive intergenerational cycle. As working-class men struggle, their families become poorer; and in these families, boys suffer the most, which damages their prospects in adult life.  Male malaise becomes an inherited condition.

Need a New Gender Economics

“Public policy needs to be informed by a new gender economics, at least when it comes to social mobility,” says Reeves.  “The dominant narrative of gender equality is framed almost exclusively in terms of disadvantages of girls and women.  But if we consider gender equality in the context of both race and class, a different picture emerges.  Especially at the bottom of the economic ladder, it is boys and men who are falling behind girls.”

5. Black men are particularly disadvantaged and at-risk.

Raj Chetty’s research (2018) from Opportunity Insights found that Black men are much less likely than white men to rise the income ladder, while Black and white women raised by poor parents have similar rates of upward intergenerational mobility.

Black Mobility Gap is Driven by Men’s Outcomes, Not Women’s

Chetty and his team concluded that the overall Black-white intergenerational mobility gap “is entirely driven by differences in men’s, not women’s outcomes.”  The main problem is the low incomes of Black men, especially those raised in poverty.  Despite impressive progress made by Black women, their children are still much more likely to grow up poor, reinforcing generational inequality.

Breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty for Black Americans will require a transformation in the economic outcomes for Black men.

Black Girls Do Better Than White Boys and Significantly Better Than Black Men

 The gender gap in education between Black women and Black men is much wider than the one between white women and white men.  For every Black man getting a college degree, there are two Black women.

Black girls are more likely than white boys to have graduated from high school; young black women aged 18-24 are more likely than young white men to be enrolled in college, and a higher proportion of Black women aged 25-29 hold postgraduate degrees than white men of the same age.  (National Center for Educational Statistics – 2018.)

 The Unique Obstacles for Black Boys and Men

 A comparison of the success of black girls and women in education to white and black boys and men reveals the unique condition of black boys and men.  Black men enter the world of work with fewer educational credentials than almost any other demographic group.  Then they face a greater risk of discrimination in the labor market as well as higher rates of incarceration.  As Chetty reports, Black men raised in relatively affluent families have lower employment rates than white men raised in poverty.

A summary of Chetty’s research in the New York Times concludes: “there is something unique about the obstacles black males face.”

 Black Men Stigmatized as Dangerous

According to studies of implicit bias conducted by political scientists Ismail White and Corrine McConnaughy, one in three white Americans rank “many or almost all” Black men as “violent” compared to just one in ten who says the same of white men.   According to McConnaughy and White, “the gender modifier does unique work in accessing negative notions of black men.  Black men are discriminated against because they are men.”

Black Men Seen as “Toxic” Long Before Term Was Broadly Applied

Sociologist Rashawn Ray showed that Black men are less likely to be physically active in neighborhoods that are mostly white.  Black men are trying to avoid being seen as a threat.  Black men have a different social reality from their black female counterparts, Ray says.  Black masculinity was seen as “toxic” long before the term was broadly applied.

Black Men More Likely to be Arrested and Shot

Seen as more threatening, Black men are more likely to be stopped by the police, more likely to be frisked, more likely to be arrested, more likely to be convicted, and more likely to be shot than white men.

War on Drugs is a War on Black men

The war on drugs became a war on Black men.  They are more than three times more likely to be arrested for a drug crime than white men (though no more likely to use drugs) and nine times more likely to end up in a state prison due to a drug offense.

Black Men Treated Like Criminals

Black men are not only less likely to be hired if they have a criminal record but also because employers are more likely to view them as criminals anyway.  One study showed that Black men without a criminal record are less likely to be hired than a similarly qualified white man with a criminal record.  Researcher and author Devah Pager writes, “effectively, the job market in America regards Black men who have never been criminals as though they were.”

Black Family and Marriage is Under Stress

Compared to both white and Hispanic women, Black women marry later in life, are less likely to marry at all, and have higher rates of marital instability, according to a study (“The Growing Racial and Ethnic Divide in U.S. Marriage Patterns”) published in Future Child (2015).  Black women in their early 40s are five times as likely as white women of the same age to have never married.   Black marriage has been undermined by anti-Black racism and specific challenges Black men face.  Dire economic conditions create a smaller pool of “marriageable [Black] men,’ so fewer couples tie the knot.

Must Be a Breadwinner to be Marriageable

To be marriageable, a man must be a breadwinner.  While it may seem outdated and sexist, here is the reality: most people, including most Black people, agree with sociologist William Julius Wilson (The Truly Disadvantaged) that breadwinning potential is highly prized in a potential mate.  Eighty-four percent of Black Americans say that to be a good husband or partner, it is “very important” for a man to be “able to provide for their family financially,” compared to 67% of white respondents (no small number).

(See “Men are unmarriageable” in the upcoming post, problem # 9.)

We Must Clear the Obstacles for Black Men

Reeves explains why more needs to be done to clear the obstacles in the path of Black men.  “There is a fear, even today, that helping men means hindering women.  But it is not true.  Raising men up does not mean holding women down or displacing them.  It means rising together.”

Reeves concludes:

The gendered racism faced by Black boys and men is unique in its level of harm, and it is time to face it squarely.

6. Policies and programs designed to promote social mobility often work for women but not for men.

A program in the city of Kalamazoo, Michigan (the “Kalamazoo Promise”) pays in-state college tuition for all students educated in the city’s K-12 school system.  The program increased the number of women getting college degrees by 45 percent.   But men’s graduation rates remained flat.  Reeves lists a whole series of programs (in various cities and states), from early childhood education to college support efforts, that produced impressive gains for women but did not boost men.

 Poor Outcomes of Boys and Men Are Buried in the Analysis

There is a recurring pattern in evaluation studies of policy interventions that shows more substantial effects for girls and women than for boys and men.  Yet, researchers rarely disaggregate results by gender.  The poor outcomes for boys and men are buried in the overall success of these programs.  Reeves says this is irresponsible and implies a certain kind of bias that celebrates female progress but ignores the languishing of boys and men.   When researchers notice this gender gap, they mostly shake their heads and have no answers for what is causing it.