Inner city schools are often poor quality, and many minorities go to these schools. The overwhelming majority of white people in this country have nothing whatsoever to do with these problems. Almost all of these inner cities are managed by Democrats, and there is good reason to believe that this is a significant part of the problem.
It might look like political one-upmanship to be pointing out the responsibility of Democrats for these problems. However, since SJWs tend to be Democrats, they have a bias against seeing Democrats’ responsibility for problems. This at least partially explains how it happens that they propose a theory with such weak evidence (white privilege) rather than looking at the obvious causes of the problem (Democrat rule).
As you can see from this list of large cities and their mayors, all of the largest cities are run by Democrats. And if you look at the history of many of these cities that have large black populations, such as Chicago, Washington, D.C., Detroit, Baltimore, and New Orleans, you will see that they have a long history of Democratic rule stretching back decades.
So how are Democrats mismanaging the schools? A big part of the answer is teachers’ unions; they are aligned with the Democratic party.
This does not mean that all Democrats are in alignment with teachers’ unions. However, teachers’ unions have enough power within the Democratic party that their desires hold sway. They contribute millions of dollars to political groups, and 94% goes to Democrats. A city government run by Democrats is very unlikely to stand up to teachers’ unions.
The unions make it harder to implement reforms and remove bad teachers. They also oppose school choice measures, because they put their members’ interests first rather than the students’ interests. It’s the union teachers who pay their dues.
Even though there are examples of black schools with very high academic success, even back when racism was a much bigger problem than it is today, we can’t expect this to become the norm while Democrats are in charge of inner cities.
Thomas Sowell has studied the successful black schools, and has found that the common denominators are: a tough curriculum and strict discipline. And recently, Democrats have been sabotaging school discipline for minority students as well.
The Obama Department of Education has issued guidance which warns schools that it could be a violation of Title VI if discipline creates a disparate impact on minorities, even if it is not done in a discriminatory manner. In other words, if a rule is enforced evenhandedly (e.g. a certain consequence is meted out consistently for a certain type of misbehavior regardless of race), but if a minority engages in that misbehavior at a higher rate than white students, this could result in a loss of funding to the school. This unfortunate guidance has resulted in less discipline in many schools, which has caused classrooms to become unsafe for students and teachers, and has reduced learning.
(Note: A majority of teachers oppose this Obama-era guidance because it makes them less safe, thus goes against their interests, so teachers’ unions are not at fault with this one.)
Many Democrats automatically think that if only these schools had more money, then things would improve. However, the successful schools identified by Thomas Sowell often were run on a shoestring budget, yet they produced good results. And many poor quality schools are spending lavishly, to no avail. For example:
“The public schools in Washington, D.C., spent $29,349 per pupil in the 2010-2011 school year, according to the latest data from National Center for Education Statistics, but in 2013 fully 83 percent of the eighth graders in these schools were not ‘proficient’ in reading and 81 percent were not ‘proficient’ in math.”
Washington D.C. is 49% black. They have had Democratic leadership since 1961 (before which were many “independent” leaders since 1920). During this span of time, their top leadership position has changed from “President of the Board of Commissioners” to “Mayor-Commissioner” to “Mayor”.