[tomp]

That is correct.

There are black people who are very privileged (e.g. Obama) and white people who are very unprivileged (e.g. the homeless). So focusing on race will inevitable lead to bosting outcomes of some privileged people and ignoring other non-privileged people.

A better way to solve this problem would be to focus on people from disadvantaged backgrounds (== poor), regardless of race.

[libertymcateer]

No, it is not correct. The problem, as above, is not just the socioeconomic background of an individual - it is about whether the power structures in society are, themselves, full of people who bear animus toward unimportant birth-characteristics of certain people - not merit characteristics, not moral characteristics, not regarding intelligence or achievement, but simply being born to parents of a certain ethnic or religious heritage.

The playing field is not level. I truly do not know why this point is so hard to communicate.

You can be the wealthiest, smartest black man alive - you are never going to be a grand dragon in the KKK. That should be quite obvious.

Now back down from that hyperbolic example - what about being a black man in the Mormon Clergy? That was impossible until very recently.

Now what about being a black man as a corporate CEO? Definitely doable. There have been 14 such individuals in the history of the Fortune 500: http://fortune.com/2017/01/16/black-women-fortune-500/ # But it may be less doable depending on the organization. Don't you see there is a continuum here? That the qualifications of the individual, including their privilege, are irrelevant when the ladder that individual is trying to climb has a "no [characteristic] need apply" sign at the third or fourth rung? Why is this so hard to understand?

# Note that this is a pretty low number.