During the 2009-2010 school year black students, who make up 12% of the San Diego Unified School District’s students, accounted for 21.5% of suspensions compared to white students who accounted for only 4%

The numbers provide insight into similar statistics on California’s and the nation’s prison population. Blacks make up about 7% of California’s population, but are 32% of its prison inmates. Nationally, blacks account for about 13% of the population and nearly 40% of those incarcerated. Much like prison, achievement gap statistics skew heavily against black males. Black males are more likely to grow up in poverty, raised in homes where fathers are absent or unemployed, and mothers detached or chronically depressed. Black children are three times more likely than white children to live in single-parent homes. They are twice as likely than their white peers to live in homes where no parent has a full-time or year-round job and only a third of black children grow up in homes where a parent has a high school diploma. By the time black boys reach the age of two, they are already behind white males of the same age when it comes to things like responding to orders and language development. Blacks also score lower on IQ tests than whites. In San Diego, only 33% of African-American students scored proficient or better on state math tests compared with 64% of white students and 69% of Asians and the graduation rate for black students is just below 79% whereas 91.4% of white students receive their diplomas.