“At least we can rest assured that if he ever needs to stand up against an actual injustice, he will.”

You’re determining that from his sneakers? He created an unjust situation in the classroom when he hogged 10 minutes of everyone’s time, and then bandied accusations of racism around in front of strangers. He will probably be assertive, but being assertive and standing up against injustice are two completely different things. The biggest jerks are very assertive.

Smart black kids should be treated like smart white and Asian kids, with exactly the same kinds of expectations for their behavior. Handling them with kid gloves isn’t doing them any favors, because at some point that will end and they will have a hard time dealing with the same bullshit that everyone has to deal with.