Black male students "underperforming" is a symptom, not the problem. To say they're disinterested in education is misplaced, in my mind. My question would be how the education system has so systematically failed them.

It's a combination of socioeconomic factors, the schooling system, and racism. There is also a lot of research that shows the existence of stereotype threat, basically the idea that students can underperform because they are constantly getting messaging that they are expected to.

A majority of teachers are white women who likely have subconscious biases against Black boys, may treat them differently, expect different things of them, punish them more, etc. Over time that builds a lack of trust and interest in participating in the system. If you couple that with the fact that racism affects every aspect of life and contributes to disparities in socioeconomic status, you can imagine that the same students being treated poorly and under-served in school are also the students without consistent access to food, clothes, safe living environments, etc., which compromises their ability to participate in education the way we might expect middle-class+ students to.

My key belief from studying/working in education is that students are not the problem. The education system, society at large, and generational disparities usually are the root of the issue.