Black dads are *more* involved in both early childhood activities like bathing and diapering, and school aged activities. From the CDC:

A larger percentage of Black dads
(41%) had helped their coresidential children with homework every day in
the last 4 weeks compared with
white (28%) dads.

Only 30% of white dads take their own kids to activities every day, vs 42% of Black dads.

71% of white dads talk with their kids about their day, vs 79% of Black dads.

Etc, etc.

But is poor school attainment because so many Black kids are born out of wedlock? The Nick Cannon effect?

No. The anecdotes are Nick Cannon, not Elon Musk, or Larry Bird. How many kids does Larry Bird have? That we know of? How many kids does Elon have? That we know of?

But ignore these ovulation addicts. The data shows that co-parenting is the trend for everyone. And it's fine.

"OK, when Black dads are present, they're involved. But too many Black dads are just not there! Why aren't they there?"

In the US, a Black man has a 1 in 4 chance of going to jail. Most likely for "drug use," even though white folk do more drugs. 🤷🏿‍♂️

Most Black dads incarcerated have not even been convicted of any crime. They're "awaiting trial," and are too poor to afford bail. You can be waiting for trial for *years*.

Just being falsely arrested will likely cause you to lose your job, and can prevent you from applying for a new one.

The mother of your child will likely need to apply for public assistance while you are locked up. The state will give her financial assistance... and then bill you.😮

You will rack up debt to the state *while you are in jail!*. You will be in "child support arrears."

Most of the time, this is not what the mother wants. Her partner has just been falsely arrested and so can't help with bills. She needs to make rent or she'll be evicted. She applies for assistance not to punish her partner, but to not be homeless with the children.

Even if you are innocent, you've just gone from being an employed, present Black dad...

To a dead beat dad, with warrants for his arrest for failure to pay child support, who can't even apply for many jobs due to the first arrest.

Some of you will remember that Walter Scott was shot in the back while running from police. But do you know why he was running?
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/10/why-was-walter-scott-running

If your definition of "stability in the household" revolves around marital status or cohabitation, rather than this systemic racism minefield presented to the parents, I urge you to reflect on that.

I mean, half of y'all's parents are divorced. 🤷🏿‍♂️ That's clearly not the issue.

Another comparison is white Europeans, who don't face this racism minefield.

4 out of 10 EU kids are born to unmarried parents. In France, closer to 6 / 10. Lower the marriage rate, the more men participate in childcare!👍🏿♥️

We call them "progressive."

https://www.statista.com/statistics/276802/births-out-of-wedlock-in-the-eu/

So this is where most of the Black dads are: in jail for unjust arrests. A human rights atrocity committed at a genocidal scale. Millions of dads.

But how do some Black kids in this situation manage to overcome this and get good grades anyway? Many factors, but an important one: Black teachers.♥️👍🏿

School in the US is fantastically racist too. A racist teacher cannot teach a Black student effectively. Even teachers that don't think that they're racist, do this:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/04/black-students-teachers-implicit-racial-bias-preschool-study

This can be countered by Black teachers. ♥️👍🏿

Black students randomly assigned to at least one Black teacher in grades K-3 are 9 percentage points (13%) more likely to graduate from high school and 6 percentage points (19%) more likely to enroll in college than their same-school, same-race peers.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w25254

White kids can benefit from this too, and aren't harmed by it. Black kids from privilege benefit a little. Black boys from underprivileged backgrounds benefit the most.

People looking to minimize the impacts of racism, believe that Black teachers help through the "role model effect." That's part of it but not the whole story.

There are few enough Black teachers in this country, that we can literally ask a good portion of them what's really happening. It's not just the role model effect. Teachers are shielding Black kids from racism.

Until they can't anymore...

https://time.com/6130991/black-teachers-resigning/

The typical education experience for a Black boy in the United States, is to have almost all white teachers, mostly women, more than half of whom vote for the most racist candidate on any ballot, and no Black teachers. The teachers have low expectations of you, punish you more than your classmates, and threaten to call the cop who works in the hallway on you at any moment.

I don't know how to explain more clearly, that this is never going to work.

I'm not surprised that Black US kids don't perform as well as white US kids, or as well as Nigerian, Ghanaian, Kenyan, or Caribbean kids. I'm surprised that any Black kids make it through this hellish gauntlet at all.

When you look at how much the US pays to educate each student, and how poorly it does at Black educational achievement, it's clear that the US is the worst country in the world at educating Black students, by far. Because racism. No one spends more to achieve less.

Once you understand white US history instead of Black history, you'll understand why the following interventions will do much more to improve US Black educational achievement than most of the nonsense we're trying today:

• Bail reform
• Fire racist teachers, including the Bill Cosbys
• Retain anti-racist Black, white, AAPI, Latinx teachers
• Get rid of school cops
• Provide all students free lunch. And breakfast. And afternoon snack.
• Transfer police budget to school budget. Bring back art.

@mekkaokereke man, I'm white, but I was a poor kid and just the fact that food was a question had a serious impact.

And that's one factor. Only one factor.

@Unampho @mekkaokereke

I honestly can't wrap my head around how you can expect a school to function without providing food to the students inside it.

Edit because I posted too early: I know it's because they're not supposed to function as school but, hell, how do people believe this?

@thekernelinyellow @mekkaokereke well, you expect the students to either eat the cheapest shit school pizza meal with no nutrition or bring the same cheap unrefrigerated sandwich everyday.

While hanging out with the rich kids who have much better food right in front of you.

@Unampho @thekernelinyellow

One of the funniest interactions I see online, is when Americans think it's inspirational that a young white US child is raising money not to buy themselves something, but to pay off their less privileged classmates' "school lunch debt."

US readers are like 🤗"Oh that's so precious! That sweet kid has a good heart!"

And EU readers are like 😮"Wait a minute... Go back a few steps... WTF is school lunch debt?! That's a real thing?! What is wrong with your country?!"

@mekkaokereke @Unampho @thekernelinyellow Canadians are weirded out by the lunch debt thing too. We don’t tend to have school lunches like America does. This varies provincially.

Kids go to school hungry here too. But staff look out for this & try to help with healthy food that tends to be in the school budget somehow or is supplemented through food banks or some thing. But profiting on lunches in school? Nope. It’s a cheap daily price, if there is one.

@snarkysteff @mekkaokereke @Unampho @thekernelinyellow I’ve not heard that US schools are *profiting* on lunches in schools. The school lunch you can buy has always been cheap.

But cheap is not free and plenty of kids can’t afford cheap. There are free school lunch programs, but why not just budget to feed every kid rather than require some proof of need?

Because USA, apparently.

@clauclauclaudia @mekkaokereke @Unampho @thekernelinyellow Yeah, but being unable to pay in Canada would trigger safety-net stuff, usually. It wouldn't mean running up debt and going hungry. The nature of the Canadian system is to try to catch the people falling between the cracks, hence "safety net".

But don't let me suggest our system perfect or even "really, really good." It's just not dog-piling bigger problems onto people who can't handle them.