Thanks to the demographics of this country, the majority of kids failing academically in this country are white. The percentage of black kids who are failing academically is higher. An individual black kid is more likely to be failing academically than a white counterpart. But thanks to the fact that this remains a majority-white nation, most academic failure is found in white students. And the fact that we insist on viewing academic failure through a racial lens-- that we only ever talk about the need to solve the achievement gap, because we need to "be real", ensures that we won't confront the numerically larger problem of poor white children and their lack of academic achievement.