As you probably are aware, Black public school students are far more likely to be suspended or expelled than non-Black students.
Why?
Is this racial – i.e. Black students are no more or less problematic than non-Blacks, they are just targeted by educators based on the color of their skin? Or is it because Black students, in aggregate, are far more prone to behaviors that lead to suspension and expulsion?
I’ve read a lot about this subject over the years. And I’ve railed about the Obama administration directive to “even things out” by not punishing some of the behaviors which raise the rate of Black suspensions/expulsions – thus leaving disruptive/often violent students in class and damaging the ability for all other students, regardless of their color, to get an education.
Heather Mac Donald, writing for city-journal.org, has provided us with what, for my money, is the single best commentary on this ridiculous procedure, how it is damaging students…and how the left avidly supports it anyway.
Please use this link to read Ms. Mac Donald’s entire piece. Here are just the first two paragraphs:
Race advocates and the media are greeting a new General Accounting Office report on racial disparities in school discipline as a vindication of Obama administration policies. The GAO found that black students get suspended at nearly three times the rate of white students nationally, a finding consistent with previous analyses. The Obama Education and Justice Departments viewed that disproportion as proof of teacher and principal bias. Administration officials used litigation and the threatened loss of federal funding to force schools to reduce suspensions and expulsions radically in order to eliminate racial disparities in discipline. The GAO report, which implicitly rubberstamps the Obama approach, comes just as Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos is evaluating whether to rescind Obama’s school discipline directives. DeVos should go forward with that rescission: the administration’s policies were fatally flawed, as is the GAO report that attempts to justify them.
The GAO report ignores the critical question regarding disciplinary disparities: do black students in fact misbehave more than white students? The report simply assumes, without argument, that black students and white students act identically in class and proceeds to document their different rates of discipline. This assumption of equivalent school behavior is patently unjustified. According to federal data, black male teenagers between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at nearly 10 times the rate of white male teenagers of the same age (the category “white” in this homicide data includes most Hispanics; if Hispanics were removed from the white category, the homicide disparity between blacks and whites would be much higher). That higher black homicide rate indicates a failure of socialization; teen murderers of any race lack impulse control and anger-management skills. Lesser types of juvenile crime also show large racial disparities. It is fanciful to think that the lack of socialization that produces such elevated rates of criminal violence would not also affect classroom behavior. While the number of black teens committing murder is relatively small compared with their numbers at large, a very high percentage of black children—71 percent—come from the stressed-out, single-parent homes that result in elevated rates of crime.
Does that impel you to keep reading? I hope so. But beware: if you want PC talking points, and realities glossed over to appease the folks who use accusations of racism as a panacea for anything and everything, you won’t find it.
What you will find is an honest, uncompromising, and absolutely invaluable explanation of this problem, the inexcusable disaster it has wreaked on public education – especially, in my opinion, for Black students who want to learn – and the untenable reasons this has taken place.
Your call.
