Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed

by Jason L. Riley

Nationwide, the racial gap in education is well documented. Black kids are overrepresented among high-school dropouts and students who are not performing at grade level. Black scores on the SAT and other standardized tests are far lower on average than those of whites. The achievement gap begins in elementary school and widens in higher grades. By the end of high school the typical black student is several years behind his white peers in reading and math. The usual explanation of this is class inequality. Blacks don’t perform on the level of whites because they come from a lower socioeconomic background and their schools have fewer resources, goes the argument. But what Ogbu found is that this problem transcends class and persists even among the children of affluent, educated black professionals.