The double standard that fails Black children

PUBLISHED: October 10, 2026 | www.baltimoresun.com

What would we call it if white children were leaving school unable to meet basic academic standards, while 13-year-olds were being arrested for armed carjackings? We would call it a crisis. We would demand answers from school leaders, elected officials, prosecutors, parents and every institution charged with educating children and protecting the public.

But when the children most affected are Black, too many people reach for a different response: explain, excuse, lower expectations and move on.

That is not compassion. It is a double standard, and Baltimore County, where Black students make up the largest share of public school attendees, is a powerful example of the damage it can cause.

To be fair, Baltimore County Public Schools reports that students have improved on state English and math assessments for three consecutive years. That progress deserves recognition. But progress cannot become a shield against harder questions. In the district’s 2026 results, just 1.83% of students taking the eighth-grade math assessment scored proficient, while the seventh-grade math proficiency rate was 4.14%. Those numbers represent children moving through school without mastering material they need for the next grade, college, a career and independent life.

If those numbers described a majority-white school district, would a few years of incremental gains end the conversation? Would parents and elected officials be told that high standards might be unfair? Would we accept children advancing without the skills their next classroom assumes they have?

Of course not. We would call it an emergency.

And we should call it an emergency when Black children are being failed, too. This is where white guilt has become dangerous. It takes a serious moral concern — the legacy of racism and the need for equal opportunity — and turns it into a performance that can obstruct the very progress it claims to support.

White guilt often centers the feelings of white people: their fear of saying the wrong thing, their need to display the right beliefs, their desire to prove they are on the right side. The result can be a public conversation in which people are judged less by whether children are learning than by whether they have used the approved language. A school system can post disappointing results, announce modest gains and still expect applause for its intentions.

Worse, guilt can encourage the belief that Black students need lower expectations, softer standards or permanent excuses. That is a patronizing message. It treats Black children as less capable of meeting the standards we expect of everyone else. It can also silence Black parents, teachers and community members who demand discipline, literacy, safe classrooms and accountability because they are accused of undermining equity.

That is not racial justice. It is a new form of condescension.

Juvenile crime is part of this same circle of devastation. In July, Baltimore County police arrested two 13-year-olds after two armed carjackings in one morning. One case cannot define a generation, and most young people are not committing violent crimes. But a child that young being arrested in connection with armed carjackings should force us to ask what warning signs adults missed, what accountability will follow and what intervention could prevent another victim and another arrest.

The public safety concern is real. County residents have raised concerns about juvenile crime and repeat offenders at town halls, while officials defend their approaches to prosecution and supervision. Families whose cars are taken at gunpoint do not experience this as an abstract argument about policy. They experience fear, violation and the possibility that the same young person may hurt someone next time.

White guilt can make this harder to address. It can turn calls for order into evidence of prejudice and questions about public policy into moral offenses. That silences debate, protects failing institutions and leaves victims, often Black residents themselves, to absorb the consequences. When leaders fear being accused more than they fear failing children, the children lose.

Accountability must mean more than punishment after the damage is done. It means holding adults responsible before children become repeat offenders: school systems that fail to teach, agencies that miss warning signs, officials who excuse results and families and communities that must confront harmful behavior directly. A child can be responsible for an offense and still have been failed by the adults around him. One truth does not erase the other.

This is also a question for Black establishment leaders. Why are so many willing to accept, year after year, schools that leave children behind and public policies that fail to protect neighborhoods? Why isn’t the same urgency applied when Black students are falling short academically as when other communities face a crisis? Why are Mayor Brandon Scott and Gov. Wes Moore not being pressed relentlessly to deliver measurable results for children and families? They do not control every school or every juvenile case, but they hold positions of influence and have a responsibility to demand better.

The deeper question is not whether these leaders can offer another explanation. It is why the people who speak most often about equity and opportunity are so willing to tolerate outcomes that deny both. Who benefits when failure is explained but never overcome? And why should Black families be expected to accept less from leaders who claim to represent them?

Acknowledging racism and historical injustice does not require us to pretend every present failure has one cause. Nor does it require us to abandon standards, excuse destructive choices or treat honest criticism as hostility. White guilt is most dangerous when it gives the powerful a way to look virtuous while avoiding responsibility and leaves the children it claims to defend with failing schools, unsafe streets and diminished expectations.

Black children do not need adults to feel guilty on their behalf. They need excellent schools, high expectations, safe streets, responsible leadership and adults willing to tell them the truth. Their lives and futures matter enough for society to demand more.

If these results would be intolerable for white children, they should be intolerable for Black children. Anything less is not equity. It is abandonment dressed up as compassion.

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.

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