Even though Karolyn Tyson didn’t discuss gender in her book, I was very intrigued to see how it affects Black boys and girls differently. There are all these statistics stating that Black women have the highest college enrollment rate of any race or gender, but not as much focus on how schooling can be different for Black girls and boy. I thought the article posted about how Black boys can essentially transition easier than Black girls can was very interesting. I had a feeling that this was the case given how we perform gender but it was nice to see that a study was actually performed to prove this. The double standards present for men and women is already seen in today’s society a lot. The way in which a woman who is assertive is seen as bossy whereas a man would be deemed a leader is one example of this. When adding race to the mix, it just complicates things even more. As mentioned in the article, the boys were able to use their Blackness to their advantage and were deemed as cool while the girls were not. There were certain things in the article that I could emphasized with and compare to my own life, which only made the article even more interesting. I definitely want to look at how gender and race play out a lot more within the Black community. It would be interesting to see how books we have read so far for class would incorporate gender into their argument, if they haven’t already, and what the results would be.

I think male privilege is something that is downplayed within the Black community and because of that issues are arising. Thinking about Black Lives Matter movement, which was started by queer Black women, has become something that focuses a lot more on the lives of Black men lost instead of the lives of others. Black trans-women have an average age of about 36, yet not many names of these Black trans-women became hashtags. It got to the point where the hashtag #SayHerName was trending on twitter to remind everyone of the Black trans women and Black women who have been lost. I remember reading an article on The Root which basically said why focusing exclusively on Black men is not a problem, which I had a big problem with. I’ve heard people say multiple times before that Black women will be there for their men but the same wouldn’t be done for the. Why don’t we talk about male privilege more? How do we have a constructive conversation where race and gender are both acknowledged without downplaying the experiences of anyone?  This issue of not discussing male privilege is definitely a problem within the Black community that needs to be addressed.