Book reviews

If I had to use one line to capture my thoughts after reading African-American males in schools and society, it would be: African-American males are more at promise for success than at risk for failure. However, this hopeful notion is tempered by the reality that the education and socialization of African-American males continue to be disproportionately myopic, disingenuously focused on inability, and regrettably embedded in de® cit-driven paradigms. In light of and in spite of this reality, AfricanAmerican males in school and society underscores practices and policies for eå ective education with African-American males. The book takes a bold and necessary departure from most of the information in the popular and scholarly press about young, black men. The theoretical and conceptual framework highlighted in the book focuses on an ecological view of development. The authors contend that proximal and distal environments have an impact on the education and socialization of African-American males. The book highlights micro-level practices (i.e., family, school, and community) that must be tapped to eå ect positive change. However, the authors successfully argue that the search for micro-level antecedents, correlates, and solutions is a necessary but not a suæ cient strategy. Macro-level policies and procedures that negatively impact outcomes for African-American males must also be investigated and ameliorated. A conversation about micro-level change must take place in concert with the sobering reality that larger hegemonic structures negatively impact the education and socialization of African-American children (Hilliard, 2000). The present body of educational literature is replete with conceptions of risk that are based on medical and disease models (e.g., measuring the frequency of disordered persons who were initially considered most vulnerable for unfavorable outcomes). Broad and distal risk factors are identi® ed in children (i.e., SES, single-parent family, minority group status) and assumptions are made that there exists a higher probability for psychosocial disorder and academic failure given the nexus between the child’ s sociodemographic status and the higher incidence of adverse outcomes identi® ed in that population. Unfortunately, use of the risk paradigm in the educational setting has engendered more victim-blaming and labeling as it relates to African-American males. The willingness and ability to make structural/macro-level changes in the social and educational system are debilitated by conceptions of who is at risk and the etiological correlates of risk. As such, educators and researchers continue to ask: ` ` Are AfricanAmerican males ready for school? and/or ` ` Are African-American males at risk of failing school? ’ ’ The inherent danger in solely making these inquiries is that the blame or credit is unduly placed on the child. The authors of this edited volume make the case quite eå ectively that we must also begin to ask: ` ` Are schools ready for African-American males? ’ ’ and/or ` ` Are schools at risk of failing African-American males? ’ ’ Their ® ndings demonstrate that knowledge and learning are far too complex and interdependent to place the responsibility for achievement outcomes solely on African-American males. Research studies, educational practices, and national policies must be embedded in a conceptual and theoretical framework that contextualizes and incorporates the complexity of the ecological in̄ uences that operate in the lives of African-American males (Bell-Scott & Taylor, 1989). Many of the chapters in this volume endeavor to make this point. At the outset, Polite and Davis make an eå ort to disaggregate the social meanings of gender and its relationship to educational outcomes for African-American males. This is not only an important area for further study; it also mirrors a national concern QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION, 2001, VOL. 14, NO. 5, 703 ± 710