Attorney and author Lisa Bloom just released her new book "Swagger: 10 Urgent Rules for Raising Boys in an Era of Failing Schools, Mass Joblessness, and Thug Culture" and in it she makes the case that today’s teenaged boys and youngest American men face three main threats to their well-being in the form of bad schools, a lack of jobs and the resulting ever-growing numbers who are incarcerated each year. In her book, Bloom explains the major threats hindering boy’s ability to succeed in today's world and offers some solutions to the issues as well.
The author contends that through no fault of their own, boys are caught in a vortex of powerful forces that when combined, conspire to rob them of their future. Taking on the current state of the schools in the U.S., Bloom explains that while U.S. schools are in a state of complete disarray, most Americans just don’t notice how many are dropping out early and fail to graduate with a high school diploma. In many areas of the country today only one in three boys graduate from high school and of those that do stay in school, they just aren’t learning much of value. Bloom points out the shocking fact that one in five American high school seniors today who do complete high school emerge so illiterate they can barely read or write. She also notes that boys do far worse than girls in every grade and subject and they are medicated, disciplined, suspended, and expelled far more often than the girls are. The end result is a horde of angry, unskilled young men entering a workplace they are totally unprepared for.
In addressing the workplace, Bloom says boys today face the harshest economy since the Great Depression and that for young men the numbers are even worse than the national averages where some thirteen million are unemployed, nine million are underemployed, and millions more are discouraged workers that have given up on looking for a job altogether. For the boys, the current jobless rate hovers at around 18 percent and that translates to some four million young American men who can’t find a job and will eventually resort to relying on public assistance. The author also says that most of the traditional male–oriented jobs in construction and manufacturing have disappeared and are not coming back anytime soon. She makes the point that millions of American manufacturing jobs have gone to China, India, and other developing countries and those jobs are now practically extinct in America. The take-away is a huge hole in the employment prospects for young men who would have once been part of the blue-collar work force, but are now relegated to welfare instead.
In addressing the problem of ever-growing incarceration of young men in America today, Bloom asserts that our popular culture is making things worse by seducing boys with “flashy, loud messages that manhood equals macho bravado, emotional numbness, ignorance, and thugdom.” She points to the glamorization of drug use that has increased while popular rap and hip-hop music continues to contain positive references to illegal drugs and send the overall message that real men express their anger through gun violence and sell drugs to earn money. This attitude has caused our prison population to jump to the highest levels in U.S. history as the number of incarcerated Americans has quadrupled since 1980. It is hard to argue with Ms. Bloom’s assertion that mass incarceration deprives boys of a future. She points out that judges today are now required by law to hand down increasingly punitive, long sentences, and even after they are released, they remain under the control of the criminal justice system and are subsequently unable to vote, get a job, secure housing, or support a family.
Lisa Bloom says her book simply points out the trends that are happening to the current generation of American boys without adding to stereotypes. The tends are clearly disturbing though, and point out the need for big changes at nearly every level of society if we are to have any chance of reversing the damage and giving the young boys of today a decent shot at the future in tomorrow’s America.