Afro-caribbean and first generation American chiming in here. I can assure you it is a cultural and institutional racism here. Being colleagues with other 1st generation Ghanaians, Nigerians, Haitians, and Jamaicans it is a recurring issue amongst the black community. Where 1st gen children who keep their culture of origin do well academically (if their culture demands it) but subsequent generations absorb more of the african-american culture which shuns academia. An example, my neighborhood highschool had enough left in the annual budget to fix the leaking roof in the science wing. The parents petitioned the schoolboard to have the money used to buy new football bleachers. This is the type of culture the students and teachers are up against.
The US has a long, and controversial, history with genetics and eugenics research. Most researchers have been wise to avoid it because, realistically, it is a career ender. Unless you enjoy your research being lumped in with propaganda spouted by racist and facist you'd be wise to not go there.
Certainly using school money to buy more football bleachers rather than invested in academics is not just something you'll find in poor minority schools - see pretty much any US university with a Div I or II basketball, football or hockey program.
>Where 1st gen children who keep their culture of origin do well academically (if their culture demands it) but subsequent generations absorb more of the african-american culture which shuns academia.
You can't really change a culture though. Is there any way you think it can be fixed?
Changing cultures happens all the time. I am a fifth-generation descendant of my family living in this state, but I think and act considerably differently from my great-great-great grandfather and his son who first settled in this state before the Civil War. I differ pretty substantially culturally from my late dad, really, as does America as a whole from his generation to mine.
One thing that promotes cultural change is interchange and communication among different cultures. Individual human beings are acculturated by their upbringing in one culture or another, but also pick and choose what cultural practices they desire to follow among the cultural practices they know about. Leadership of a school system (or of a country) involves urging people to follow cultural practices that will be to their long-term advantage, and setting up incentives so that individual human beings are nudged into following those practices.
(Basis of knowledge: many-generations European-American who has lived overseas in east Asia twice in his life, married to a spouse who grew up in east Asia of east Asian ancestry since earliest historical times. We have a pick-and-choose blended culture in our family, and note that we have genuinely multicultural relatives, friends, neighbors, clients and work colleagues who pick and choose what cultural influences they follow.)
The US has a long, and controversial, history with genetics and eugenics research. Most researchers have been wise to avoid it because, realistically, it is a career ender. Unless you enjoy your research being lumped in with propaganda spouted by racist and facist you'd be wise to not go there.