Tough question. My family has a phrase, “Died of stupid,” but it’s usually applied to relations who weren’t doing what their parents told them.
Democrats, black and white, benefit from black illiteracy (and innumeracy). Money floods into inner-city school districts, and most of it is dissipated in patronage and graft, while what actually reaches the classroom tends to be unproductive.
If each classroom had a homeschooling mother with a copy of Alpha-Phonics, some math worksheets, and three U.S. Marines to keep discipline, the students would learn. There’s a lot of flack about the lower intelligence of black people, but that’s irrelevant at the level of the 3 Rs. Black children in the immediate post-slavery era learned, and they could learn today if they were disciplined and taught.
Oh, I know it can be done...but a lot of people make a lot of money with the mess just as it is today.. Like young Abraham Lincoln, young blacks used to learn with little resources (in segregated schools, nonetheless). Whites feared economic competition from them because they could do many of the same jobs; we’re way past that point now. Even unskilled whites could rarely be replaced by blacks today.