There is not a single choice
There are a series of choices beginning at a very early age.
Some choose to take a path away from failure while others lazily just go with the disastrous flow.
The fact there are many that succeed belies the fact that all are doomed to fate
Yes, that at least is true. W.E.B. Dubois' "talented tenth" were horribly disadvantaged and unfairly held back by legal segregation.
But it is also true that, in a high school where the average IQ is 80-85 (and there are many of them) mandating an academic curriculum including Algebra II and algebraic geometry, with outcomes measured by external validators, is cruel and unusual. That those subjected to "competition" in a system designed for an IQ range of 100-110 don't do well, and develop antisocial behaviors (aggression in males, pregnancy in females) is no surprise.
An otherwise fit 16 year old boy with an IQ of 80 does not "choose not to compete" in Algebra II, and telling him that he's "free" to engage in such a competition is a lie, and what's worse is, he knows it.
The dysfunctional "urban" culture doesn't "cause" school failure, but rather is caused BY school failure. Certainly you would agree that the emergence of this culture AFTER African-American students were made "free" suggests cause and effect.
And there is no evidence that African-American boys and young men abhor competition - far from it.
If you took the top 10% of white high school math students and sent them into a pre-NBA basketball teen league to compete, and you made them stay even after they wanted to leave (by law), and then you judged and scored them in one-on-one drills against the top African-American athletes, and when they didn't win you called them "failures", they would, I imagine, be angry.