[toasterlovin]

FWIW, Asian immigrants, statistically speaking, basically all came well after the civil rights movement, and mostly came here without any wealth, which means they were also unable to participate in generational wealth accumulation. They also had a pretty fundamental disadvantage: they didn’t speak English.

Any hypothesis that attempts to explain the plight of black Americans needs to also adequately provide for the incredible success of Asian Americans. And, if you think it’s merely skin color, then you have to account for Indian Americans, who are often darker skinned than many black Americans, yet who out-earn white American households nearly 2 to 1.

[alphabettsy]

I don’t believe any reasonable person thinks that centuries of racial violence and discrimination evaporated overnight and all barriers disappeared for black people. Personally I don’t think it’s reasonable to think experiences or impacts would be the same across different groups of minorities given that many policies and actions were specifically targeted at and impacted black Americans.

That destruction had and continues to have a lasting impact.

There are many theories on why recent immigrants, including African’s, perform better than Black Americans. The psychological impact has been well documented and might help explain some differences in achievement compared to white Americans.

[toasterlovin]

I don’t disagree, but I was responding to the narrow hypothesis that generational wealth is a significant causal factor. And then trying to get people to think more like investigators, instead of just rolling with whichever story sounds good (since that is determined to a large extent by the skill of the storyteller).