[meri_dian]

You have it backwards, the "no barriers" mainly came from being wealthy. I'll give a small anecdote: One of my friends is from a very wealthy family. He is a person of color. He was still able to gain admission to an elite boarding school, now works for a prestigious company, is respected by his peers, etc.

Privilege mainly comes from wealth. Of course it is a serious problem in society when certain groups have disproportionate poverty or less wealth, because that indicates some structural cause.

However in the modern day that cause is simply the fact that most people, regardless of skin color, do not move out of their parents' income decile. And when one group is already more economically disenfranchised than other groups, then that economic disenfranchisement will perpetuate itself.

[maxerickson]

A recent study found that black men from rich families had notably different outcomes than white men from rich families:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-c...

[jazzyk]

Replace "black men from rich families" with "second-generation Italian-Americans from rich families" and you get the same result.

This is not about race, this is about belonging to a small network of Brahmin aristocracy in the US. For example, some people in New England will never invest in your startup (no matter how good it is), if your name does not look like "Landon Jefferson Bayard, III", or some such.

Even if you are white.

[jjeaff]

>Replace "black men from rich families" with "second-generation Italian-Americans from rich families" and you get the same result.

I highly doubt it.

There has been racism against lots of minority groups in the US, but few rise to the hundreds of years long legacy that exists to this day that is racism against African Americans.

[acdha]

Additionally, there’s the question of passing: it’s much easier to blend in with a higher status group with similar melanin levels - pick up some clothes, learn some cultural signifiers, etc. That’s just not possible for someone with the disfavored skin color. Even a black kid raised by adoptive parents can’t avoid things like worrying every time they see a police officer.

[vthallam]

Offtopic - But this NYT article has a very great interactive design to show the data.

[giantsloth]

Thank you for your anecdotal evidence and the obvious truism that wealth opens doors.

Black people make 57.50 to every 100 dollars a White person makes. The majority of wealthy people in America are white. 90% of all people lose their wealth by the 3rd generation. Therefore the slim ratio of wealthy black families are going to lose their wealth and it’s going to affect them much more.

The majority Black people have only just started to be able build wealth after Jim Crow, where white people have had hundreds of years.

People enjoy helping people that look like or remind them of themselves phenotypically, therefor even people that became new money, science would suggest will receive more help from the more numerous amount of wealthy white people.