Systemic Racism In Public Education

Public education certainly has a "culture" associated with it, considering that so many of the people who work in the field have college degrees.  I honestly don't think there's systemic racism in schools, I honestly don't think all those union teachers (or the non-union ones, but I had to throw in a union jab there) are racists.  I think there are groups of people whose culture doesn't mesh well with that of public education, though, and it's easier to point their fingers at teachers than to look at themselves:

But can this disparity really be blamed on lack of quality education for blacks? Are blacks really not going to college because of socioeconomic reasons or hidden racism that denies them opportunities given to “privileged” white students?

Despite what Brown and civil rights leaders say, not all research supports this conclusion. One preeminent study by John Ogbu, “Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement,” concluded that the education gap between whites and blacks has more to do with community forces than economic status or racism.

These community forces, which include the ways minorities interpret and respond to school, as well as beliefs and behaviors within the minoirty community regarding education, work against blacks succeeding in the educational system. Ogbu found that this is something that does not affect other minorities in the same way or to the same degree as blacks, if at all.

While all minorities express some level of mistrust in white Americans, blacks are more concerned about how they’re treated by the teachers than they are with the teachers’ ability to provide them with an education that will make them productive citizens. One is purely subjective, the other is objective...

This means blacks don’t feel like they’re part of the educational environment, which is indeed largely defined by society’s dominant culture (a reality in most developed countries). They feel like they’re ostracized or neglected, not because they aren’t accepted by the education system, but because they perceive it is oppositional to their interests. This, in turn, makes them oppositional to the education system.

This implies that if there’s a bias, it’s on the part of blacks toward the white education system, not whites toward blacks. If the white education were truly riddled with subtle racism, then no other minority would be able to succeed.

But blacks have more trouble because they perceive that the system is against them. Instead of simply using the system as a tool to prepare for higher education and life, as other minorities do, they’re looking for an environment that reflects their image and treats them as they expect to be treated. When those subjective expectations don’t happen, they cry racism.

I have read that immigrant blacks have far higher educational results than American-born blacks. If that's true, it supports the commentary snipped above.

This is why young black students are often ambivalent toward blacks who are “successful in white institutions or white establishments in society” or students who make good grades. Ogbu’s data raised the question, not of how white education can “stop being racist,” but “how the black community and schools can work to minimize this type of ambivalence and dismantle the perception of certain attitudes and behaviors as racialized.” In other words, can blacks stop seeing everything through the lenses of race?

Given this cultural bias within the black community, it is no wonder that Ogbu found that black parents left achievement up to schools and did not actively invest their time and resources into making it happen for their children.

I've never heard a teacher criticize a high-achieving black student as "acting white".  There have been native born black Americans who have pointed this out, but the most prominent one I can think of, Bill Cosby, is too easily dismissed nowadays due to issues entirely unrelated to such views.

Update, 1/17/18:  Can you really cry "racism" in that most progressive of progressive cities, San Francisco?

Black students in San Francisco would be better off almost anywhere else in California.

Many attend segregated schools and the majority of black, Latino and Pacific Islander students did not reach grade-level standards on the state's recent tests in math or English tests.

A local NAACP leader called for declaring a "state of emergency" for black student achievement, a problem the city's school board acknowledged. "The problem cannot be reduced to one sickness or one cure," said Rev. Amos C. Brown, San Francisco's NAACP branch president. "Black students have been underachievers. They're living in toxic situations. It's amazing they've done as well as they have done, but it's criminal that sophisticated children in progressive San Francisco are performing at these levels."

But is the solution to fix what's broken, or to start schools anew? Answering that question has unveiled a heated political debate in Northern California.

What are these "toxic situations" that Brown mentioned?  Are they at all related to what Ogbu described above?