Books

The Guide for White Women who Teach Black Boys

Empower black boys to dream, believe, achieve

Empower black boys to dream, believe, achieve

Schools that routinely fail Black boys are not extraordinary. In fact, they are all-too ordinary. If we are to succeed in positively shifting outcomes for Black boys and young men, we must first change the way school is "done." That’s where the eight in ten teachers who are White women fit in . . . and this urgently needed resource is written specifically for them as a way to help them understand, respect and connect with all of their students.

As Eddie likes to say, “This is what it looks like after the book is published! But in writing it, we had some blood sweat and tears.”

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How could we expect that it would be otherwise? We are talking about one of the most persistent questions of our times, and we are coming at it from polar opposite perspectives—those of a Black man and White women. As an editorial team, we are clear that our relationships with one another, and the polarity of our differences, is absolutely a manifestation of the same energy that runs through this book. It is an energy that comes from our love and respect for one another, from the electrical current that our differences spark. It is an energy generated by the coexistence of seemingly contradictory answers that together lead to complex, multifaceted solutions. We hope that when it is hard, when teachers face disagreement and difference, that they remember that energy and magnetism come from opposing forces. We recognize that without each other we could not even ask these questions, much less answer them.

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