Letter to a Marxist

I recently had a discussion about systemic explanations for education inequality with someone who said that a main (or the main) reason why we have systemic education inequality is that the ruling class does not want an educated proletariat for fear of it disrupting the social order. In other words, if poor people were educated, they would uproot the social structure, make it more equal, and cut into the wealth of elites. We both stipulated that America has the resources to radically improve education, but isn't doing it. This is part of an email I wrote in response:

My problem with this claim is that I think it doesn't have the same evidential support of more simple, competing theories: namely, subtle racism, the self-interest of taxpayers, and structural policy failure.

At the most simple level, we can observe visible incidences of racism: racial epithets, lynchings, hate crimes; and we reasonably infer that less visible racism exists. I grew up in very blue collar communities, and I got the general sense that a lot of blue collar white people feel they get taxed for working hard so minorities can get handouts for being lazy. There is also a solid body of economic research explaining wealth redistribution vis-a-vis welfare on racial terms: people of race A are more likely to support wealth redistribution if the recipients are also people of race A. I also think you underestimate most Americans' dislike of the taxes requried to improe education. Finally, I think think there are also systemic or structural forces that undermine good education policy. For one, the money needed for the reforms you cited is only available at the national level, but the structure of education is that its locally controlled. Many people oppose uprooting local control on the grounds that locally controlled schools allow for flexibility, or on federalism grounds. Up until recently, any such federal intervention would have been vigorously opposed on federalism grounds to protect federalism so states could be racist. And many, many conservatives in congress philosophically oppose the broad reach of the federal government (it's why most of the legal support for the medical marijuana case Gonzales v. Raich came from the conservative legal community on 10th Amendment and interstate commerce clause grounds).

Having said all this, I have never heard anyone "corporate" explicitly say or otherwise indicate that they don't want poor kids to be educated; but I have heard people say "black people are lazy,"; and Rush Limbaugh has publicly broadcast that America's drug problem is the product of weak-willed minorities. On the other side, many corporations and figureheads give back to education. The President of Goldman Sachs (Jon Winkelried), for example, is personally very involved with education because his son is special-ed. Small schools - for better or worse - are partially funded by the Gates Foundation. And corporations systemically donate to education over many other philanthropic causes.

Now, it's possible that these are all features of the superstructure and that Winkelried and Gates have deluded themselves with a false consciousness, but I can't help but be sceptical of such a non-falsifiable proposition (however meaningful the narrative or elegant the theory) in the face of simpler, empirically supported theories.

I guess my question to you is, what reasons do you have for believing that this Marxist oppression hypothesis is a better explanation of education inequality than these other simple - and it seems to me better evidenced - explanations?