RUTHFULLY YOURS

Mr. Washington, who is 62, gave a pointed response. “Well, it starts in the home. If the father is not in the home, the boy will find a father in the streets. I saw it in my generation and every generation before me and every one since.” He added, “If the streets raise you, then the judge becomes your mother and prison becomes your home.”

In the film, Mr. Washington portrays a defense attorney, and reporters at the screening pressed him to weigh in on current debates about race and the U.S. criminal justice system. Instead, the actor doubled down on his message of strong families and personal responsibility. “It starts with how you raise your children,” he said. “If a young man doesn’t have a father figure, he’ll go find a father figure. So you can’t blame the system. It’s unfortunate that we make such easy work for them.”

What is remarkable is not that the Oscar-winning actor, who has been the national spokesman for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America since 1992, expressed these sentiments. Such talk is commonplace in black churches and beauty salons and barbershops and community centers. What’s remarkable is that Mr. Washington opted to say what he did within earshot of so many whites. Black political leaders and activist organizations, in an effort to raise money and stay relevant, much prefer to focus on racial prejudice when publicly discussing black-white disparities. Mr. Washington broke with that protocol. In private, those on the black left might acknowledge that black children watch too much television and read too few books. In public, however, they blame the achievement gap on biased standardized tests and racist school administrators.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told reporters Monday that the administration is “looking closely” at reversing the Obama administration’s controversial approach to school discipline, which urged schools to take race into account when deciding whether to suspend a disruptive student. “It would be premature to say anything about that right now, but we want to make sure that all students have an opportunity to learn in an environment that’s safe,” she added. A 2014 guidance letter sent by Mrs. DeVos’s predecessor warned school districts that any racial imbalance in suspension and expulsion rates could trigger a federal civil-rights investigation. Given that black and Hispanic students are more likely to attend violent schools and thus more likely to become the targets of bullies, policies that go easy on misbehaving students inevitably hurt low-income minorities the most.