The writer focuses on the life of the largest New York immigrant group – people from Dominican Republic, the West Indies, and Haiti. She tries to explain what role is assigned to ethnicity and gender in the lives these people, why it is easier for girls to study and succeed, why and how schools fail the boys of colour.
In general, racism and sexism in educational institutions are the main themes of the book. Lopez conducts a research which, she hopes, will help her to reveal the causes of the problem, and informs her readers about gender disparities in education within the minority groups. The writes also points out that class plays an important role in determining the persons status as well and influences the results of the study – all the study participants were low-income people. She states that there is a significant lack of adequate educational resources for such people and analyzes how it affects their lives, visions and mentality.
Lopez studies, for example, how differently young Latin boys and girls are treated at school. She states that boys are constantly challenged and put down while girls are encouraged and complimented in cases they do something well. Hence, the boys perceive teachers as discouraging them from attending school while the girls seem to be encouraged to stay in school. Boys are shown to get poor grades on tests. Young women at the same time get good grades, are being placed in honours and college prep courses. In the writer’s opinion teachers put lower expectations on Dominican boys and, consequently, they have lower grades.
Race, gender and class are equally taken into account in the given study; however, gender seems to be the primary issues of the analysis. Both men and women have been equally examined. At the same time the research might appear to be somewhat inadequate for it was conducted only in schools of New York and it should be mentioned that school policies, attitudes and customs of this city may differ from those of smaller cities – study seems to be too locally-concentrated. Besides, the book makes desperately a little comparison between European and Caribbean Americans.
In the school Nancy Lopez describes teachers don’t have any offices and students don’t have any textbooks or extracurricular classes. Most of the attention is paid to students’ passing through metal detectors and ripping off boys’ hats. Much less attention is paid to the safety and quality of their learning. At the same time the writer outlines that attitudes towards women are not as strict and severe as those towards men - girls are allowed more things to do and are not as often and severely punished as boys usually are. Dr. Lopes also outlines that more optimistic outlooks of girls lead them to greater success at school while boys are not so successful due to their ambivalence about the promise of education. This is how the author tries to convince that gender plays a very important role in defining current and future lifestyles and inner motivations of those Haitian, West Indian and Dominican youngsters.
However, the issue of gender and race is not new. And unfairly the writer claims that all Caribbean boys are unsuccessful – any boy having a desire to go to college knows that 4.0 GPA may give him such an opportunity and is getting his As no matter how bad the school or the attitude to him might be. It should also be considered that not all white boys and girls study well. And race and gender are not necessarily reasons for that. This is not caused by lack of challenge or bad attitude either.
Besides, it should also be noticed that many things taking place in our society have formed historically and have been shaped through years. Some things are just generally accepted. Some events happen not because the society doesn’t care about somebody, but because that somebody has no desire and motivation to act or behave differently. People are not perfect, there is no perfect society. Dr. Lopez tries to draw general attention to the problem of race and gender in education – but this problem is not new.
America is a country of immigrants, a great mix of various ethnicities, cultures and mentalities. Surely, in such an environment conflict and misunderstanding happen, but shouldn’t the author, instead of defending the rights of her ethnical group, aim her efforts on the improvement of educational system in general?.. As she writes, students don’t have textbooks – in such a situation why are they expected to study well?
Almaguer, Tomas. Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 1994.
Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Espiritu, Yen Le. Asian American Men and Women: Labor, Laws, and Love. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1996.
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Nancy Lopez. Biography. Latin American and Iberian Resources at the University of New Mexico. Accessed 05 June, 2006 <http://laii.unm.edu/survey/display/?username=nlopez>.
