Boys will be Boys…deconstructed

Have you ever noticed that language is so powerful that at times it can blind us? As kids, and even adults, when we learn a new phrase or saying it usually does not occur to us to ask too many questions about the meaning. (I mean, who has time for that?!?) We hear a saying from our parents, peers or other trusted person or book, or news, or radio or … really we learn stuff from a myriad of places and just go with it. We might ask simple questions like “what does that mean?” but really we probably just want to know that concept or thing this new phrase is labeling so we don’t use it wrong in the future. If the phrase resonates with us in some way we look for ways to use it soon, or maybe just file it away in our mind palaces for future reference and go about our merry way. As I embarked on a new journey in 2020, I started learning all kinds of new phrases, ideas and words — and I started learning about another side of some old phrases that I had used all my life, but, as it turns out, with little understanding (talk about OUCH!)! What do I mean? Let’s break it down.

To begin: Let’s take “Boys will be boys” as an example. “Boys will be boys” is a very old saying (like OLD, back to 1589, from a book called The Proverbs and Epigrams of John Heywood). It’s been used to playfully describe the rough play, risk-taking, or sometimes aggressive behavior some young men get up to, anything from a 4-year-old covered in mud from playing in the puddles after a rainstorm to 10-year-olds pulling a girl's pigtails to a 15-year-old TPing the neighbors house on Halloween. It is used to lighten up locker room talk, speeding tickets, fraternity hazing and even embarrassing drinking or drugging hijinx. (BWBB can be used to excuse far worse things like sexism or harassment but we are gonna stick to hijinx for this). Generally in white America it’s simply a nod to youthful exuberance, an understanding that young men test boundaries, have fanciful ideas, make mistakes. As a white Gen X woman growing up in late 20th century AmericaI I heard and used “Boys will be boys” thousands of times without ever thinking too much about it (I mean, it’s harmless right? What could possibly be the problem?!?). It was an idiom that made perfect sense to me even if the behavior was a bit mysterious, and, having heard and used it many times in many situations, it was just part of the fabric of my culture.

The other shoe: In the summer of 2020 I had cause to think again about this light, pithy little phrase. I was sitting outside enjoying a quiet summer evening (as you may recall one of the few luxuries allowed to many of us during that long lonely locked down summer) when I was disturbed by the sound of dirt bikes buzzing around my city neighborhood. Growing increasingly irritated as the buzzing drew closer, I watched the street in front of my house to see who was making all the bloody racket. Soon enough, a group of maybe seven homemade mechanized bikes zipped past my house, popping wheelies, hootin’ and hollerin’, on these bikes that were like nothing I had ever seen, random engines attached to frames and wheels that were definitely not off any showroom floor (in other words—super low brow in my overly sensitive white perspective), and my temper flared. Of course, the young men riding these bikes were not white so my first thought was “What a bunch of hoodlums” (yeah, sometimes Xer’s talk like Boomers) followed closely by “What in the world are those bikes?” and “Wait! WTF am I thinking?!?” In a nanosecond I went from anger and irritation to curiosity tinged with worry, shame and embarrassment. Suddenly the buzzing faded from my consciousness and was focused on why in the world were these young men annoying me so?? Why was I wondering where the cops were?? Why was I assuming their parents were absent? (Just how white am I?!? 🤦‍♀️). To calm myself, I took a deep breath, set aside the part of me that was screaming I was being racist and forced myself to go deeper to see if I could pinpoint why and how this was happening to me. As a test, I closed my eyes and reconstructed the scene in my head—imagining I was sitting in my yard in a white suburb and a group of white neighborhood teenage boys had buzzed down the street on their homemade motorbikes, how would that make me feel? Almost immediately, the phrase “Boys will be boys” popped into my head like a thunderbolt and I realized I was entertaining a serious double standard! These were just boys, black and brown boys sure, but just boys! As freaked out and bored by COVID as anyone. (Crap! Double crap!) As bizarre as this felt, I realized if those boys were white and this were suburbia instead of my diverse city neighborhood I would be applauding their ingenuity and giggling at the thought of the squares in my neighborhood stressing about them taking advantage of empty streets during our state’s lockdown to have a little harmless (if noisy) fun with their toys, (I mean when else would they get away with riding their bikes on real roads with little chance of interfering with cars or Americans hurrying to and fro, the miscreant in me loves that kind of insouciance!!). If ever there were a situation that called for “Boys will be boys” this was it, and here I was perpetuating a pretty racist perspective while enjoying that beautiful summer evening, all because I had never stopped to think about which boys “Boys will be boys” applies to (😔).

They say memories are tied to emotions, and I remember sitting there all alone in my shame feeling like a bag of bricks had just been dropped on my head as clearly as if it were last week. I was in the midst of a personal antiracist awakening that summer, proud that I was protesting, reading, talking—basically working to learn more about what racism really is, what racist ideas I held without knowing it (after first struggling to understand wtf a racist idea was), just beginning to uncover what my (few) personal unconscious bias might be, (no way I was racist, I’ve never been racist so maybe I have one or two of those unconscious bias things!), so needless to say this series of thoughts was unpleasant. Could something so trite really be harmful, racist ideas in disguise?

As time has passed I’ve had space to sort through that tangle of conflicting emotions, and I’ve returned to this ‘Boys will be boys idea’ time and time again (with repetition comes comfort right? HA.). By never thinking too hard about this ubiquitous phrase and others like it, what had I done to myself and others? What has white America done to other Americans? Could this be part of the reason white America and black (and brown, and other BIPOC) America can never quite see each other clearly? Never one to let a bone go once I’ve got it in my teeth, the questions didn’t stop there. What would our world be like if we white Americans applied that phrase to all boys, not just white boys? Would our juvenile homes be less full? How many kids would never be suspended? Would America’s incarceration and discipline statistics be more aligned with race demographics of our country at large rather than disproportionality reflecting black and brown Americans? How would the media approach stories if they applied all Americans to this seemingly trite and throw away phrase? How many other phrases do we use daily that might be tinged with racist ideas we never knew were there? Honestly, there are so many more questions, and I don’t know the answer to any of them for sure but I’m guessing it’s more than white America is comfortable with (OK, here I am definitely assuming many white Americans feel as powerless as I do when I have these truths about my epistemology float up to consciousness).

What I do know is, for me the bright side of this thunderbolt of realization is that in the years since George Floyd’s murder there have been innumerable situations and opportunities to check my biases, both conscious and unconscious. The nuance of a phrase that is on its face race neutral curdles the guts when we realize its use is anything but race neutral in the way we’ve been applying it. In so many aspects of our white American culture, we just assume all Americans are the same and that we treat them the same. So we don’t use the words white America or black America, and we don’t use that concept in our thinking … which blinds us and traps us into a serious double standard of perception that is far more harmful than the situation I found myself in on that summer evening. And as weird and basic as it is, I have been very thankful I was alone with my shame, that I found that little life hack of swapping BIPOC folks for white folks in my head to check my reaction to situations as it helps me stay conscious of what a double standard I can so easily apply to non-white Americans. It opened up the way I am able to see other humans who don’t look like me, and has brought me a bunch of new friends to boot. Once we know better we can do better, right?

Peace and love.

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If you are curious as to what unconscious bias you might have, Harvard is conducting an ongoing study that you can participate in called Project Implicit that can provide you with some insight. The Implicit Associations Tests are fun and free, covering a wide range of general topics like gender, age, race, and weight to more specific topics like Presidents, Arab-Muslim, Asian, Transgender etc. And they change the tests all the time to keep it fresh. Hope you will find them as fun and enlightening as I do.