Like mentioned in the article, only 13% of Americans are black[0].
Secondly, nearly 30% of that 13% are living in poverty[1].
So really you only have ~8% of Americans who are both black and not in poverty. From there it gets whittled down further for cultural reasons. You could similarly ask "where are there so few white rappers?" or "why are there so few male nurses?" and find cultural reasons and pressures involved for that.
“Cultural reasons” is often a “dog whistle” term. I don’t believe that’s the case here, and am responding in that spirit.
Why does “Black culture” in the US differ from “White culture”?
I believe it’s because their experiences differ. Blacks in the US are disproportionately poor, urban, and from unstable home environments. While I don’t have facts to back this up, I expect that if we compared groups segmented by these factors we would find the racial/ethnic disparities to be much less pronounced. That difference could be reasonably attributed to culture.
What shaped those cultures? That’s the important piece of information, and the root cause here. Looking back over American history, I’m aware of no point in which Whites and Blacks had even roughly equivalent conditions as a whole. At best, I would expect that the Black experience today is somewhere close to first-generation Irish or Italian immigrants in during their initial surges. Perhaps a closer fit would be Chinese immigrants during the railroad boom of westward expansion. It took generations for those groups to be fully integrated into our society.
I fully expect it to take generations to solve this problem. There’s much to do that can speed it up - like ensuring legislation does not discriminate either explicitly or implicitly - but it’s going to take time.
Changing hiring practices alone will not solve this.
>Why does “Black culture” in the US differ from “White culture”?
One factor - white Americans have historically identified not as "white" primarily, but by country of origin - Italian, German, British, etc. "White" as a culture tends to be used as a reference in contrast with and in comparison to "black" culture or people.
Whereas African slaves and their descendants were deprived of the opportunity to identify with their culture and countries of origin, so they had to build a cultural identity around the only common attribute and heritage they were afforded - their race.
This is literally all the evidence one needs to see the problem here. Their poverty is the result of decades of discrimination.
Not necessarily. For example the Joseph Rowntree Foundation defines poverty as bottom-third. By their method the proportion of those “living in poverty” is fixed, regardless of overall standards of living. To be poor in America is still to be much better off than most of the world.
Why does “Black culture” in the US differ from “White culture”?
I believe it’s because their experiences differ. Blacks in the US are disproportionately poor, urban, and from unstable home environments. While I don’t have facts to back this up, I expect that if we compared groups segmented by these factors we would find the racial/ethnic disparities to be much less pronounced. That difference could be reasonably attributed to culture.
What shaped those cultures? That’s the important piece of information, and the root cause here. Looking back over American history, I’m aware of no point in which Whites and Blacks had even roughly equivalent conditions as a whole. At best, I would expect that the Black experience today is somewhere close to first-generation Irish or Italian immigrants in during their initial surges. Perhaps a closer fit would be Chinese immigrants during the railroad boom of westward expansion. It took generations for those groups to be fully integrated into our society.
I fully expect it to take generations to solve this problem. There’s much to do that can speed it up - like ensuring legislation does not discriminate either explicitly or implicitly - but it’s going to take time.
Changing hiring practices alone will not solve this.