Black culture is Southern white culture. I don't mean to diminish the many unique aspects of black culture (some historic, some modern), but any New Englander who sat at the dinner table of a working-class black family in a major Northern city, and then at a dinner table of a working-class white family in the rural Deep South, would have an eerily similar cultural experience. Presuming, of course, either family still regularly sat down for dinner together, or even lived as a family unit.

It's only to be expected then that not only do Asians lead blacks in educational attainment, they lead whites, too. And while I don't have the data, I wouldn't be surprised if this difference was greater relative to rural whites, and greater still relative to rural Southern whites.

If you don't understand that--as long as you remain convinced that Black culture is substantially distinct and uniquely (if at all) inferior--then it's easy to dismiss racism. But once you begin to see that, not only does the reality and the pervasiveness of systemic racism in this country become clear (especially the institutional racism of the Deep South), but the notion of a singular white culture disintegrates, and the concept of Americana fragments. All of a sudden the world is way more complex; even the relevant questions, let alone answers, become difficult to identify. That's no fun so I'm not surprised people remain willfully blind to it.