The tone of the Denver Post editorial – and the tone of people quoted in it – about “racial disparity in student discipline” implies a strong suspicion that racism is an important factor in minority students being “disproportionately more likely to be disciplined than their white peers.”  However, we should remind ourselves of Mark Twain’s quip that “There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.”

The fact that black students get disciplined more often than white students could be – and I would suggest is likely to be – primarily due to their being disproportionately likely to behave in a way to demand that discipline.

There are plenty of statistics, not least about birth to unwed mothers (nearly three times as common among black women as white women), which would lead one to understand how black students might have discipline issues in larger proportion than white students.

It is not racist to observe the lack of strong two-parent families among black Americans nor to recognize that a child growing up without a father is more likely to have discipline problems than a child growing up in a more stable two-parent household. In 2004, 69.3% of births to black women were to black unmarried women. (This compares to 24.5% of non-Hispanic whites and 46.4% of Hispanics.)

And while some people might argue that “the system is racist”, it can’t be simply racism that accounts for over 35% of American prison population being black males, even though blacks overall make up only 12.8% of the population overall.

There are deep structural and behavioral problems in much of urban black America. Trying to pretend otherwise is not just flawed thinking, but actively works to prevent the community from addressing those problems, offering blame everywhere other than where it most likely belongs.

School districts which implement “equity training” are assuming that there is racism involved in “disproportionate” discipline of blacks and Hispanics. The only possible outcome of such politically correct mush is that fear of being called a racist will cause teachers and administrators to avoid disciplining minority students who earned (and truly need) discipline or to discipline white students for lesser infractions, just to keep their apparent discipline ratio low enough to avoid criticism by race-baiters.

I do not assume that racism in the imposition of discipline, suspensions, etc., in schools is impossible. Indeed, it would be surprising if there were not a racist teacher or administrator in any given large school district. However, they are likely to be a very small factor in these statistics which look at large numbers of students in large school districts.

Therefore, rather than reflexively assuming there is systemic racism in our schools, the Denver Post and school administrators should have the courage to ask what’s wrong within our minority communities which cause their children to require so much more discipline than average.