In this case, you had to. The situation is "poor people (yes, mostly African American) against the system that is built to keep them down". You make it to be "white people against black people". This proposes all the wrong solutions - instead changing the corrupt system that hinders students' advancement and keeps them from getting out of the cycle of poverty, you would promote "racial sensitivity" and "listening to the students" and "white people shouldn't try to do anything before they read all my favorite books" - with the focus, as it turns out, on enabling and protecting disruptive and non-learning students and supporting their negative attitude towards learning and advancement. not only for themselves but spilling out to their peers. Instead of working against the corrupt system that makes it impossible for a bright student to achieve success, you are working against the white people that try to help this student, because they are white, so they must be the problem. This makes - already made - the situation worse.
Yes, USA has a long history of racial issues. But the way it is approached now - especially in the education system - does not work to heal this history and make things better. It works to keep people that were left behind for historical reasons - still left behind, now for reasons of broken policy and misguided "sensitivity".