You Can't Bring About a More Just World by Lying

I've been a teacher in a majority-minority community for fourteen years. In all that time, I've been unable to avoid noticing certain patterns among the students who succeed and the students who fail.

The success profile: Engaged parents (usually two). A family ethos that emphasizes education. Consistent attendance. Consistent homework completion. A respectful, cooperative attitude.

The failure profile: Absent or hostile parents. No pressure from family to succeed in school. Comes whenever he or she feels like it. Never does homework. Treats the whole educational enterprise with distrust.

There are subcultures within my community that tend to produce kids who fit the first profile, and there are other subcultures that tend to produce kids who fit the second. I can't not see this. But I also can't talk about this forthrightly without being tarred as a racist. This is deeply frustrating because, in the end, the differences I notice have blessed little to do with race. I've worked with fresh-off-the-boat families from West Africa (read: black and speaking with foreign accents) whose kids go on to enroll at our state's flagship school (average SAT score: 1400) -- or even, in one case, Harvard. But no: discussion of this is apparently verboten.

Also verboten: Discussing the fact that my best friend in high school was repeatedly called an Oreo because she a) hung out with me and b) actually gave two shits about school.

It was even proposed to me, once, that simply bringing up the existence of the academic achievement gap is itself a racist aggression.

I'm not surprised, then, that ideologically-possessed leftists have been falling all over themselves this week to defend Baltimore. I'm not surprised that it's now verboten to discuss all the things I personally witnessed while living there, including the rampant drug use, the crime, the crumbling town homes, and - yes - the rats.

But folks: it's bug-crap crazy to actively cover up the truth just because Orange Man said it and Orange Man Bad. As a matter of fact, I think we should all be screaming at the top of our lungs about the decay of Baltimore. That decay is a monument to our failure to get urban policy right; if we don't face it, how will we ever empower the people who live there?

Question Trump's motives for bringing it up all you want. It's still profoundly unjust that there are people in America today who've been relegated to trash-and-vermin-filled slums. We should be coming together to come up with solutions instead of banishing each other for highlighting the problem. And yes -- we should be questioning government officials who supposedly represent these people on their manifest failure to help their constituents.