Actually, I have invested a great deal of time in this subject given most of grandchildren are African American. Looking at the “summary” of the book you referenced, it seems to concur with my conclusion, that the inner city African American culture is toxic. Sadly, it then seems to embrace the idea of “victimhood” and emotional imprisonment. Without pointing out the reality that the “prison guards” have left the prison and so the prison has become one largely self imposed.

But keep in mind most African Americans don’t live in the inner city or remote rural farms and that most African Americans experience very comparable outcomes with all other racial groups. So we need to stop talking about African Americans and whites… since those are false comparisons… lets focus on a subset of African Americans those living in very specific toxic cultural environments.

This focus changes the whole narrative away from “racism” to the actions needed to change cultures in a much smaller targeted group of people.

A “subset” of African Americans do experience a challenge growing up surrounded by a toxic culture. My brother’s charter school is full of children from poor inner city African American neighborhoods, whose parents have rejected the “culture’ of the community in which they live… We need to offer more schools like his, he is at max capacity, but we struggle with public teachers’ unions that do everything to block those opportunities.

The teachers are not racist, but they see charter schools as against their interests by introducing competition to education. Seeing things for what they are… is a starting point. By the way, I understand why teachers fear competition, but I simply believe we cannot cater to those fears if it is hurting inner city children.

Law and order is critical in the inner city. While the media plays up the “defund” the police movement, 80% of inner city parents want to preserve police funding or enhance it. They are not stupid, they understand law and order is critical for their children to have any chance of being safe from the “gangs” that help fuel the toxic environment of the inner city and hopefully someday escaping the inner city as so many other identify groups have done in the past.

Cultural problems are like bad habits and very hard to break. I wish I could remember it, but there was a great book written on a group of violent tribes in Northwest India. After years of violence, the British imposed strict marshal law for more than a generation combined with education that included condemning violence as a means of justice. Decades after the British left, the area remains one with extremely low violence rates relative to other parts of the country. Interesting approach to cultural change. Forcibly imposing peace, while you educate a whole generation on non violence conflict resolution. There was more to it than that, but those were the core initiatives.

So where we agree is that culture plays a huge role in a child’s future success. As a society we should focus on ways to change that culture rather than attribute racism as its cause. More importantly, where we disagree is that I believe individuals are not bound by their culture… because “involved” parents can be more influential in the development of children than the surrounding “culture”, at the individual level children can be “saved” from their toxic culture by their parents and not society…