I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Darrell Owens before but according to his Twitter bio he’s a data analyst for a California group trying to advocate for more housing construction. Anyway, he posted something on Substack which caught my attention because of the headline. It’s titled, “Half of Black Students Can Barely Read.” He’s specifically talking about students in the Bay Area though he does broaden the argument to the rest of the country.

In 2021, 47% of Black students in SFUSD that are high school juniors don’t even come close to meeting English-language proficiency. That’s 9% higher than the state average for Black 11th graders — which is also abysmal. That means for every one of two Black students leaving San Francisco high schools they can’t read for their age. Including students who are close but still not proficient: 71.5% of Black high school juniors in San Francisco cannot read at a proficient level, compared to 20.3% of Asian students, 22.6% of White students, 32% of Filipino students and 61.8% of Hispanic students. It was bad pre-pandemic as well but it’s gotten a few percentage points worse…

But it’s not just the San Francisco education system. Oakland’s even worse than San Francisco, though it trended in the right direction in terms of severely illiterate Black juniors during the pandemic. Region-wide, in district after district, about half of Black high school juniors are not sufficiently literate. Same in California and same throughout the United States. Black boys in particular struggle with literacy far below peers and Black girls as early as the 3rd grade.

He goes on to state the obvious. Kids who graduate (or don’t) not being able to read don’t have a very bright future. At best they’ll wind up in jobs that don’t make much money. At worst they’ll wind up in prison. He cites a study that found 80% of juvenile criminals can’t read at a level appropriate for their age.

From there the piece takes a few turns. First, Owens wants to dispense with the model minority myth, i.e. the idea that Asian students perform well in the same schools, demonstrating that there’s a cultural problem, not a problem with the schools.

It’s a particularly silly criticism because the majority of Asian Americans are foreign-born and the 96% can trace ancestry after or around the 1965 immigration act. However, discrimination against Asian Americans is still rampant, particularly in the immigration and employment system; and in Silicon Valley’s management positions.

In comparison, only 9% of Black Americans are foreign born — rather the inverse of Asian Americans. Vast majority of Black Americans trace their ancestry back to slavery.

It’s true that, according to the Pew data he links, 71% of Asian adults are foreign born. But it’s also true that 80% of Asian kids are US born. So what are we comparing exactly? Are we comparing the Asian kids and Black kids in San Francisco schools? If so, then both were likely born in the US and grew up here as part of the same overarching culture.

What I think Owens is trying to suggest is that while the kids may be US born, the parents of the Asian kids have brought another culture with them from somewhere else and are instilling that culture in the kids. So he’s admitting this is a cultural problem, he’s just taking issue with the idea that any culture can really change, especially after centuries of legal discrimination which ended relatively recently.

So, yes, when talking criminal justice and poverty, it is a cultural problem. But it’s an American cultural problem of centuries of imposed segregation and disinvestment against Blacks, that was explicitly legal until one and a half generations ago. Asking wide swaths of Black America to imitate foreign cultures they don’t know as a means to break 400 years of imposed suppression in the country they’ve lived in for generations is moronic and absurd. No other ethnic group can do it or has been expected to…

Census 2021 finds that 64% of Black children and 50% of Native American children are growing up in single-parent households — compared to just 24% of white kids and 15% of Asian kids. Single-parent households are one of the greatest indicators of future poverty and substandard education for children.

These are, of course, exactly that kind of figures that conservatives point to when suggesting there’s a cultural problem, actually a kind of Gordian Knot of problems involving family, fatherhood, education and poverty. And since he’s already agreed the problem is cultural we’re at least partly in agreement. I might disagree to some extent but he’s clearly not wrong about the history of legal, racist abuse Black people have suffered until relatively recently. But we’re still left with half of Black kids in San Francisco who can’t read well. What are we supposed to do about that? In other words, regardless of where you pin the blame the problem still persists and demands an actual solution.

Owen’s answer is some kind of reparations. He says it’s a given that San Fran can’t afford to give every black resident $5 million (though he thinks it’s a good idea) but he points to other suggestions in the same document such as hiring more black teachers. If you look at pages 43 and 44 of this document you can see what he’s talking about. Here’s a sample.

Objective 6: Invest in recruiting Black educators.
Actions
6.1 SFUSD should recruit Black teachers from HBCUs and throughout the community and region.
Objective 7: Develop incentives for retaining Black educators in the SFUSD.
Actions
7.1 Provide housing stipends for Black educators commensurate with market-rate housing needs.
7.2 Create a grant program to improve teacher preparation, recruitment, and ongoing professional
development that fully incorporates culturally responsive pedagogy.
7.3 Provide funding for teacher pathway programs and continuing education opportunities.
7.4 Provide stipends for books, materials, etc Provide scholarships for San Francisco-based students
attending public and private universities pursuing careers in education

This is where he lost me. His argument is that the only way to fix the literacy problem is to a) hire black teachers and b) give more money and support to black families to make up for the losses they experienced through practices like redlining, etc.

But will any of that actually work? Regular readers know I’ve written many times about the abysmal schools in Baltimore which are quite a bit worse than the ones in San Francisco. Those schools are both well funded and feature lots of black teachers and administrators. And yet the results border on being a crime, a kind of fraud against the residents of the city who are also mostly black. So, I’m sorry but I don’t see any reason to think hiring black teachers in San Francisco would solve this problem or necessarily make it even slightly better.

As for giving more money to black families, unless we’re really giving those single mothers $5 million each they probably won’t be able to do all the things for their kids that two parent families are able to do. Having two parents to share the load makes a difference. Hiring a tutor is great but the real solution is growing up as Owens himself did, with a dad who drilled him on phonics and made sure he was ahead in reading when he started school. Who is going to be there pushing the kids who don’t have a dad in the home? Who is going to set the high standards for school work, graduation, maybe even going to college? These aren’t things that a check in the mail can do for a child.

At some point, the fix comes down to the parents or parent and what they choose to value and focus on. That’s not a difference anyone can make for another person and certainly not one a culture can make for another culture. I would love to see these kids in San Francisco (and Baltimore) succeed. They deserve that chance. I’m just not convinced it’s as easy as Owens suggests. This Gordian Knot isn’t so easily loosened.