Pernicious stereotypes

Manhattan: What does Hillary Clinton know about teaching black boys that she pens an Op-Ed (with David Banks, CEO of the Eagle Academy Foundation), “How to help young black men” (June 4)? Other than anecdotes and claptrap about “race,” she and Banks offer nothing but racial stereotypes and sociological jargon regarding cultural and skin color differences to support their conventional ideas that black and Latino boys must be schooled and mentored separately from whites and Asians, and all girls, for that matter, including the girls from the same households as their brothers. Presented are the usual bromides about dysfunctional black families and how black boys (but not girls) especially need father figures in the home. Absent is the complexity of families today, including single-parent and same-sex parentage. This separatist treatise is rooted in racism and sexism, premised on the theory that minority boys in particular are troublesome and headed to prison and a lowlife existence because they lack males in their homes. I urge readers not to drink from the Clinton-Banks cup of academic malpractice and racialist nonsense.