To be clear, I'm not saying I have any strong opinions on what's causing these differences, I'm just suggesting that it's likely multi-faceted and some of the causes are likely to be difficult to discuss because it will require us to make negative claims about groups of people, eg, "African-Americans have cultural values which do not align well with academic success".
I'm not sure I understand what "generational trauma" is but I'm certainly not dismissing it as part of the explanation.
My problem isn't with people like yourself – you seem very open to discussing this. My issue is that the public and politicians are not open and instead debate whether we should ignore the fact a fully meritocratic system would effectively discriminate against African-Americans, or if we should instead use state force to correct for these differences. It's just the wrong debate to have and it will never produce a good solution to the problem. The questions you're asking are the valid ones – even if I believe the answers are likely to be more complex.
There's this meme on top of a painting of a (maybe Victorian era?) couple, where the man says something to the effect of "what goes on in a woman's mind?" and the woman replies "well, I think ..." to be cutoff by "its a mystery", and then "if you'd let me..." to be cutoff by "I guess we'll never know".
This refrain of "its multi-faceted" and "we don't really know" feels a bit like that. We do know what causes all of these issues. Each and every contributing factor is well documented in isolation. So I'm responding to that.
However, we are (as you say) in full agreement that the actual answers are complicated. I'd go further and say the reasons why those are the answers are themselves complicated, and because they take more than an election cycle to effect. My claim is that it will take generations to rectify, if ever.
I'm not sure I understand what "generational trauma" is but I'm certainly not dismissing it as part of the explanation.
My problem isn't with people like yourself – you seem very open to discussing this. My issue is that the public and politicians are not open and instead debate whether we should ignore the fact a fully meritocratic system would effectively discriminate against African-Americans, or if we should instead use state force to correct for these differences. It's just the wrong debate to have and it will never produce a good solution to the problem. The questions you're asking are the valid ones – even if I believe the answers are likely to be more complex.