# Article - "Unsayable Truths About a Failing High School" - Fair article or not? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 23, 2017, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293 "2017-05-23T17:11:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/41 "2017-05-24T15:07:05Z")
Out-of-school suspension (or expulsion) has never really been a good solution to anything, because the kind of kids that get suspended are usually the kind who view it as a reward, not a punishment, and they do indeed get up to all sorts of other trouble when they’re out of school. Much better, and which many schools are now doing, is in-school suspension, where the students have to go to a room set aside for that purpose, get supervised by the best disciplinarians in the school, and still have to do their classwork. It still gets the troublemakers out of the general classes to let everyone else learn in peace, while also not just abandoning the troublemakers themselves, and giving them at least some incentive to not get in trouble in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/42 "2017-05-24T15:34:53Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > The article … does say there is a solution, alternative schools, which would isolate the troublemakers and allow those in the real schools to have a chance at an education. Because more of the troublemakers are black that is deemed unacceptable to the education establishment and so is not being tried. That is the unsayable truth … It goes further. Because black troublemakers are involved there’s no political will to help their living or home conditions at all. It’s “liberal garbage, redistribution, coddling, rewarding,” you name it, there’s a word for it. The popular solution is not just to kick them out of school, but out of society. We’ll spend as much or more on jails, but nothing to keep them out of jails. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/43 "2017-05-24T16:09:16Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > I’m assuming that by black, you mean Somali? I’ve heard many times that the Somali community has basically taken over the Twin Cities, and sadly, I have never heard one positive thing about them from people who lived anywhere around them. ☹ :rolleyes: :eek: The article and the policy it describes refers only to students of color, which would include Somali immigrants. But I haven’t heard much by way of complaints about Somalis specifically. Hmong, yes, but I assume that “students of color” included Hmong. There are noticeable numbers of Somali where I live, and I haven’t noticed much complaining. But neither of my kids are in school with them right now. > [@Velocity](#): > > This approach seems analogous to as if a politician said, “Far more men than women are arrested for rape, and this is disproportionate, so let’s change the laws so that it is much more difficult to arrest a man for rape, thus making the arrest rates more equal,” and then rape rates skyrocketed. > > It’s putting the cart before the horse. Pretty much, yes. The idea is that students of color are being suspended because of racism, so make it harder to suspend a student of color and then there will be fewer racist suspensions. Maybe some of the suspensions were racist, although I have seen data that suggest that black teachers are just as hard on black students as white ones. The trouble is with the suspensions that weren’t racist, but were based on students acting out. If black students are disproportionately acting out, then making it harder to suspend them is going to enable the behavior, disproportionately. > [@BigT](#): > > And, FYI, what Shodan described was racist policy, assuming he has not pet his own biases influence his telling of the story. It assumes people of color are inherently more likely to do criminal things. No, it doesn’t assume that. It says that black students come from disproportionately single parent households, and that students from single parent households tend to have more problems in school (and in life in general). Both of these are obvious facts. The “unsayable truth” is that the problems of the black community have very little to do with racism. And the reason it’s unsayable is that liberals react as you do and **Der Trihs** did - instantly labeling anyone who says it as a racist. So it goes. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/44 "2017-05-24T16:21:07Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > … > > The “unsayable truth” is that the problems of the black community have very little to do with racism… This is the wrongest “truth” I’ve ever heard. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/45 "2017-05-24T17:25:19Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Are these the only two options? The way I see it, the problem’s either inside black people or outside black people. If you know of a third direction, feel free to present it. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/46 "2017-05-24T17:27:20Z")
> [@astro](#): > > I think it’s granted that the root of the specific dysfunction we are talking about with respect to the attitudes and behaviors of children coming out poor, single mother households is deeply embedded in the history of how racism has impacted black people in America over the generations and marginalized black men as fathers. I think it’s also a fact that there is no real fix for this situation short of magically making all the poor, single mother households middle class, academically involved and having engaged middle class dads or other engaged middle class SO’s sharing the parenting load and modelling proper behavior for boys. > > But let’s assume that magic does not exist and this dysfunction has persisted across generations and there is no way to “fix” this short of taking the kids away from these parents at a birth. Let’s also assume there is no amount of political will or voter inclination to gather enough funds to give these single mother families the equivalent of a middle class level of resources. Plus people would reasonably ask that even if this economic scaffolding was available would things really change if attitudes about discipline, academic engagement and general behavior did not change. > > So, if you have a group of kids whose attitudes make leaning and academic progress very difficult for them and others in their proximity, and there is no magic wand or enough real world resources to make their household economic behaviors and attitudes middle ass what is the fix? Containment, triage, make believe? Muddling through? What do we owe the kids who _do_ want to learn in these chaotic environments? If I’m reading you correctly, you’re acknowledging the problem originated with racism directed towards black people. But then you seem to be saying it’s too big a problem to be solved. To which, I disagree. Yes, it’s certainly a big problem. But human beings created the problem so human beings can eliminate it. It’ll take a lot of effort but it can be done. Is it worth that large effort? I say yes. I could argue that it’s worth the large effort because eliminating racism would help black people. But I suspect there are some people who wouldn’t care about that argument. So I’ll present one they may find more relevant; we should eliminate racism because it would help white people. Isn’t that the central theme of your OP? The problem is black people are ruining the schools that white people are trying to learn in. By extension, black people are hurting white people by selling them drugs and robbing them in the streets. And black people are forcing white people to pay high taxes to support all their welfare payments. And then black people force white people to pay even higher taxes in order to maintain the police departments and prisons that white people need to keep black people under control. And the music; let’s not even get into that. Racism is really creating a burden for white people who have to deal with the consequences of racism. So white people need to make it easy on themselves by eliminating racism. Sure, it’ll be hard. But we’ve got gumption. We can do this. We can make our lives better. And, oh yeah, make the lives of black people better too. That would be nice, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/47 "2017-05-24T18:23:05Z")
We pretty much have to assume that the problem is not inherent to black people, otherwise no solution (besides eugenics) is going to work. And the article didn’t say anything resembling “there is something inherently wrong with black people” - it said that the problems were caused mostly by students who were raised in single-parent families, and that blacks are disproportionately raised in single-parent families. If there were something wrong with black students, then reducing the number of suspensions wouldn’t help either. So it seems that all sides in the debate agree that something can be done. They just disagree on what it is outside the students that is causing it. One side appears to believe the problem was racist suspensions, so they reduced suspensions in hopes of eliminating or reducing racist suspensions. Unfortunately, that had the side effect of not reducing the non-racist reasons for suspensions, which is students acting out in school. Nobody is saying that there is something inherent in black people that makes them get pregnant without being married. It’s their culture, and culture is not inherent. And culture can be changed. But you don’t change it by responding to everyone who points out a problem with “so you are saying that black people are inferior”. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/48 "2017-05-24T18:29:44Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > If I’m reading you correctly, you’re acknowledging the problem originated with racism directed towards black people. > > So white people need to make it easy on themselves by eliminating racism. Sure, it’ll be hard. But we’ve got gumption. We can do this. We can make our lives better. > > And, oh yeah, make the lives of black people better too. That would be nice, I guess. This would be a great project for members of a place like the straight dope to tackle. Form a collaboration group, approach it from all angles, the rolls all Americans have to play, the rolls the minorities will need to play. Keep the collaboration open to a very diverse group of contributors. Form teams assigned to approaching the different aspects and there are many. Give ourselves a time limit like 1 year to formulate a strategy on how these issues could be best approached and then publish a book on it. Groups could be formed based on developing their own solutions to things and then brought into debate. Contributors would not be limited to the top intellectuals but open to just about anyone as long as they adhered to an agreed upon protocol for collaborating. Not only would a very important topic be addressed the art of open source collaborations could also be greatly enhanced. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/49 "2017-05-24T18:31:20Z")
> [@](#): > > I could argue that it’s worth the large effort because eliminating racism would help black people. The steps they took to “eliminate racism” in the article of the OP didn’t help black people - it hurt them, because it made the environment where they were supposed to learn more violent and disrupted. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/50 "2017-05-24T18:54:47Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > If I’m reading you correctly, you’re acknowledging the problem originated with racism directed towards black people. > > But then you seem to be saying it’s too big a problem to be solved. To which, I disagree. Yes, it’s certainly a big problem. But human beings created the problem so human beings can eliminate it. It’ll take a lot of effort but it can be done. > > Is it worth that large effort? I say yes. I could argue that it’s worth the large effort because eliminating racism would help black people. But I suspect there are some people who wouldn’t care about that argument. So I’ll present one they may find more relevant; we should eliminate racism because it would help white people. > > Isn’t that the central theme of your OP? The problem is black people are ruining the schools that white people are trying to learn in. By extension, black people are hurting white people by selling them drugs and robbing them in the streets. And black people are forcing white people to pay high taxes to support all their welfare payments. And then black people force white people to pay even higher taxes in order to maintain the police departments and prisons that white people need to keep black people under control. And the music; let’s not even get into that. Racism is really creating a burden for white people who have to deal with the consequences of racism. > > So white people need to make it easy on themselves by eliminating racism. Sure, it’ll be hard. But we’ve got gumption. We can do this. We can make our lives better. > > And, oh yeah, make the lives of black people better too. That would be nice, I guess. No, the issue in that some underclass kids are ruining the opportunity for education for other, mainly black, underclass kids who do want to learn. The white demographic component represented in these at risk schools is generally minimal at best. I appreciate that you are engaged to “fix” this but what would you try that has not been tried already? There is no amount of good deeds and intentions that will enable a dysfunctional underclass to progress if that group can hang on and survive, even if just barely, without changing. A lot of different ideas have been thrown at this problem and it persists. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/51 "2017-05-24T19:04:34Z")
> [@astro](#): > > No, the issue in that some underclass kids are ruining the opportunity for education for other, mainly black, underclass kids who do want to learn. The white demographic component represented in these at risk schools is generally minimal at best. > > I appreciate that you are engaged to “fix” this but what would you try that has not been tried already? There is no amount of good deeds and intentions that will enable a dysfunctional underclass to progress if that group can hang on and survive, even if just barely, without changing. A lot of different ideas have been thrown at this problem and it persists. I think it has to be approached form a “what can whites do?” and “what can blacks do?” perspective. I think the issue could use a lot more exposure as well. Not so much in your face blaming exposure but more on the lines of human interest stories that we can all relate to. There is a great opportunity in this area for writers but could be best achieved if the stories were not just the product of one mans thoughts. ---
**Author:** ![cwthree](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9de0a6/32.png) [@cwthree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cwthree)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/52 "2017-05-24T20:13:30Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > The trouble is with the suspensions that weren’t racist, but were based on students acting out. If black students are disproportionately acting out, then making it harder to suspend them is going to enable the behavior, disproportionately. There’s no evidence that black students were acting out disproportionately relative to their white peers. There is, however, a good deal of evidence that black students are punished for infractions that are overlooked when committed by white students, and that black students receive harsher punishments than white students for the same infraction. “Making it harder to discipline black students” isn’t going to help much with either of those, since it doesn’t actually address either of those issues. Things that might help include: [ul] [li]Review historical misbehavior by all students, and define a list of behaviors that are unacceptable, regardless of race;[/li][li]Remove from this list all harmless actions that are limited to students of a specific race or ethnicity (e.g. wearing cornrows or natural hair);[/li][li]Define appropriate punishments, which do not affect students of one race disproportionately, for misbehavior;[/li][li]Exclude police or “safety resource officers” from the disciplinary process unless a student is violent or actively disruptive (shouting, throwing things, etc.). Dress code infractions are not “actively disruptive”.[/li][li]Institute a review process, with parental involvement, that must be followed before any long-term punishment (suspension, expulsion, loss of class credit) can be implemented.[/li][/ul] > [@Shodan](#): > > It says that black students come from disproportionately single parent households, and that students from single parent households tend to have more problems in school (and in life in general). Both of these are obvious facts. Only one of these (“black students come from disproportionately single parent households”) is a fact, and neither one is “obvious”. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/53 "2017-05-24T20:30:52Z")
Several members of my family have been public school teachers. I have numerous friends that have been and are public school teachers across many grade levels. The most common problem that I hear from almost all of them is the amount of time and focus they place on attempting to discipline or time spent dealing with the behavior problem kids, which tends to be about 10% or less of their students but takes up about 30-40% of their day. Which in turn means that the kids that are their with good attitudes and desires to learn get short changed by the system. I learned early on as a supervisor of people, that in the work force you normally find yourself spending more time on trying to develop the under-performers and not enough time on developing the good performers into superstars. In the long run, the people that don’t get it should be cut loose and put more focus on the highly productive employees. It seems like the US education system has fallen behind because we put too much attention, time and effort on trying to keep the under-performers at some level and not left behind. This isn’t the military, we should be doing everything we can to help the over-achievers to blossom. If that means putting the disciplinary kids and under achievers into one of [Astro’s two year alternative schools](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=826825) to permit the rest of the school to thrive, then so be it. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/54 "2017-05-24T21:43:49Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Nobody is saying that there is something inherent in black people that makes them get pregnant without being married. It’s their culture, and culture is not inherent. And culture can be changed. > > But you don’t change it by responding to everyone who points out a problem with “so you are saying that black people are inferior”. I didn’t tell people they were saying black people are inferior. I asked people if they were saying black people are inferior. That’s an important distinction. And it’s an important question too. One of the first steps to fixing a problem is to find out where the problem is. So we need to know if the problem is something black people are doing or if it’s something that’s being done to black people. The consensus seems to be that it’s something that’s being done to black people. And it’s producing a big problem, to black people specifically and to everyone in general. So we should figure out a way to change what’s being done to black people. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/55 "2017-05-24T21:48:18Z")
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#): > > This would be a great project for members of a place like the straight dope to tackle. Form a collaboration group, approach it from all angles, the rolls all Americans have to play, the rolls the minorities will need to play. Keep the collaboration open to a very diverse group of contributors. Form teams assigned to approaching the different aspects and there are many. Give ourselves a time limit like 1 year to formulate a strategy on how these issues could be best approached and then publish a book on it. Groups could be formed based on developing their own solutions to things and then brought into debate. Contributors would not be limited to the top intellectuals but open to just about anyone as long as they adhered to an agreed upon protocol for collaborating. > Not only would a very important topic be addressed the art of open source collaborations could also be greatly enhanced. I guess we have a different idea of what a big problem is. I believe this problem is far too large to be solved by a few dozen people working in their spare time over the course of several weeks. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/56 "2017-05-24T21:51:37Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I guess we have a different idea of what a big problem is. I believe this problem is far too large to be solved by a few dozen people working in their spare time over the course of several weeks. I might take 40 years to solve the problem but some bright people could possibly help to get the process going. Every day that passes is a tragedy in a lot of peoples lives. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/57 "2017-05-24T22:34:59Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > 1. I didn’t tell people they were saying black people are inferior. I asked people if they were saying black people are inferior. That’s an important distinction. > > 2. And it’s an important question too. One of the first steps to fixing a problem is to find out where the problem is. So we need to know if the problem is something black people are doing or if it’s something that’s being done to black people. > > 3. The consensus seems to be that it’s something that’s being done to black people. 1. Not to criticize you personally, but in many cases that ‘question’, which is highly loaded, is used as a rhetorical weapon when there’s been no actual suggestion ‘black people are inferior’. 2. Unfortunately it’s vastly more complicated than that. The social situation is a cumulative function of what _has_ happened, not just what _is_ happening. The whole recent decades’ history of US racial policy\*shows that, how to craft policies on the basis of group identity to undo the legacy of wrongs done to different individuals in the past, and without creating more social division than is healed. It’s obviously very hard. IMO race conscious remedies are past their social expiration date in the US, now clearly counterproductive. Other opinions can differ, but it’s certainly not as simple as saying whether ‘X is doing it or is society doing it to X’. 3. Parsing the words exactly I don’t agree and I believe there is manifestly no such consensus. There might be a consensus that the legacy of past racism is a significant factor (more/less powerful consensus depending whether you want to strengthen the adjective from ‘significant’ to something more). But there is no consensus in the US that current racism is the or a major factor in differences in group outcomes, as in major changes would arise if ‘we’ just stopped being ‘racist’. Some may think so. I don’t, many don’t, and there’s manifestly no such consensus in the US as a whole. Which anyway leaves the question of what particular manifestation of racism ‘we’ would stop. It’s relevant to discuss whether school discipline is applied in a racially biased way, but typical in that any such point of policy debate is going to be at the margins in terms of solving the problem. And IMO saying there isn’t really a solution to an issue is not necessarily defeatist nor does it mean do _nothing_. It may just be the case that it’s really not that solvable. I am pretty convinced this one is not (again, I respect opposing views). So what would agreeing on that possibly gain? Again as from previous post, it can avoid education policy that gets too wrapped up in the differences in academic performance by group. That can lead to wasting resources, or de-emphasizing objective academic achievement, which I believe has happened. A key goal (there is no one single goal) is that any kid in any school with the innate ability and self discipline to perform well should be able to. Whether there are relatively fewer of those kids in some schools than others should not be such an obsession IMO, nor should it be assumed the foregoing 'couldn’t be true. Cultivating those kids, and finding realistic courses of study for non-exceptional kids are both IMO at least as important as worrying about apparent group differences in academic achievement. I think the education policy debate in the US focuses too much on why things don’t come out more equally among groups, with pseudo moral certainty that there’s some practical ‘solution’ to that which I don’t believe exists. \*and not only US, read this week’s article in The Economist about racial policies in Malaysia to aid the traditionally less well off majority, Malays along with other ‘sons of the soil’ indigenous minorities, as opposed to Chinese and Indians. It has a familiar ring to it from US perspective IMO, the injustices (favors for well off Malay elites, not poor Malays) and social tension that build up and undercut the ‘temporary’ policy over time, which never seems to end, because some see its failure to undo what _was_ done as crying out for more and more of such policies. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/58 "2017-05-24T23:03:27Z")
> [@Corry\_El](#): > > Not to criticize you personally, but in many cases that ‘question’, which is highly loaded, is used as a rhetorical weapon when there’s been no actual suggestion ‘black people are inferior’. Fair enough. But this thread started out with this: > [@astro](#): > > It tries to be polite, but basically says that in a practical sense a lot of failing urban school dysfunction can mainly be laid at the feet of black, single mother families and their school age children’s tendency to be violent, disrespectful to authority, academically disengaged and also not have academic performance monitored or supported at home. So the suggestion that this problem was being caused by the behavior of black people was there right from the start. I didn’t introduce the idea into this thread; I just asked for clarification on what had already been said. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/59 "2017-05-24T23:23:06Z")
> [@Corry\_El](#): > > Parsing the words exactly I don’t agree and I believe there is manifestly no such consensus. There might be a consensus that the legacy of past racism is a significant factor (more/less powerful consensus depending whether you want to strengthen the adjective from ‘significant’ to something more). But there is no consensus in the US that current racism is the or a major factor in differences in group outcomes, as in major changes would arise if ‘we’ just stopped being ‘racist’. Some may think so. I don’t, many don’t, and there’s manifestly no such consensus in the US as a whole. > > Which anyway leaves the question of what particular manifestation of racism ‘we’ would stop. It’s relevant to discuss whether school discipline is applied in a racially biased way, but typical in that any such point of policy debate is going to be at the margins in terms of solving the problem. > > And IMO saying there isn’t really a solution to an issue is not necessarily defeatist nor does it mean do _nothing_. It may just be the case that it’s really not that solvable. I am pretty convinced this one is not (again, I respect opposing views). So what would agreeing on that possibly gain? Again as from previous post, it can avoid education policy that gets too wrapped up in the differences in academic performance by group. That can lead to wasting resources, or de-emphasizing objective academic achievement, which I believe has happened. A key goal (there is no one single goal) is that any kid in any school with the innate ability and self discipline to perform well should be able to. Whether there are relatively fewer of those kids in some schools than others should not be such an obsession IMO, nor should it be assumed the foregoing 'couldn’t be true. Cultivating those kids, and finding realistic courses of study for non-exceptional kids are both IMO at least as important as worrying about apparent group differences in academic achievement. I think the education policy debate in the US focuses too much on why things don’t come out more equally among groups, with pseudo moral certainty that there’s some practical ‘solution’ to that which I don’t believe exists. I’m reading this and I want to make sure I understand your meaning. We’re talking about academic performance of groups not individuals. I think we both would agree that there’s evidence that black students, as a group, perform poorer academically than white students, as a group. Yes? So the question is why this happens. My opinion - and I’ll openly admit that this is a personal opinion - is that there is no inherent reason why the academic performance of black students should be indistinguishable from that of white students. I think ideally you should be able to compare them side-by-side and see the same distribution of good and bad results. Do you agree with this? Or are you saying you believe that this is not the case? That even if there were no outside factors at work and black students and white students had the same experiences and circumstances that there would still be a noticeable difference in their academic performance? ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293/60 "2017-05-24T23:42:31Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > So the question is why this happens. My opinion - and I’ll openly admit that this is a personal opinion - is that there is no inherent reason why the academic performance of black students should be indistinguishable from that of white students. I think ideally you should be able to compare them side-by-side and see the same distribution of good and bad results. Do you agree with this? > > Or are you saying you believe that this is not the case? That even if there were no outside factors at work and black students and white students had the same experiences and circumstances that there would still be a noticeable difference in their academic performance? There is an inherent reason as long as their are different cultures and values even within the U.S. and there certainly are. “Race” is only an indirect marker that happens to be a very visible identifier for rather large cultural differences even if it isn’t always accurate in the case of recent immigrants and others. It isn’t just a black and white issue either. You can take a group of Asian kids and drop them in a mostly white Appalachian school and the smart bet is that many of them are going to quickly rise to the top of their class. The same thing is true for Jewish students. Their cultures value education a great deal while many American black and some American white subcultures do not to the same extent. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/article-unsayable-truths-about-a-failing-high-school-fair-article-or-not/787293.md?page=4)