This article in The Atlantic by Aboubacar Ndiaye, Black Boys Have an Easier Time, touches upon some of the issues raised in Tyson’s work, and Prof. Bobo’s lecture,  in terms of integration, race, school structure and notions of oppositional culture. It especially addresses the lacunae in Tyson’s scholarship on the intersection of race and gender and its impact on education and integration.

In an article published last year, Megan M. Holland, a professor at the University of Buffalo and a recent Harvard Ph.D., studied the social impact of a desegregation program on the minority students who were being bussed to a predominantly white high school in suburban Boston. She found that minority boys, because of stereotypes about their supposed athleticism and “coolness,” fit in better than minority girls because the school gave the boys better opportunities to interact with white students. Minority boys participated in sports and non-academic activities at much higher rates. Over the course of her study, she concluded that structural factors in the school as well as racial narratives about minority males resulted in increased social rewards for the boys, while those same factors contributed to the isolation of girls in the diversity program.

Minority young men are considered by their white peers to be cool and tough; minority young women, on the other hand, are stereotyped as “ghetto” and “loud.”