How much do historical racism vs present-day culture explain disparities in Black communities?
I'm a British-Asian male in my early 20s that spent part of my life living in the United States. Recently, I had a discussion with my African-American friend about disparities in poverty, crime and family structure in Black communities.
My position is that historical and systemic racism still have significant, long-term effects today and help explain some of the modern disparities we see.
My friend's position is that while historical racism was obviously real and harmful, present-day issues such as family breakdown, culture, personal responsibility and community norms are much bigger factors now. He argues that people often overstate the role of historical racism when discussing current issues.
One point he raised was that Black family structures were stronger during segregation than they are today, and he argues this suggests modern problems cannot primarily be blamed on past racism. My response was that historical racism may have helped create many of the conditions that later contributed to those outcomes.
I'm posting this to genuinely understand perspectives from Black Americans, especially those who lived experience with these issues.
How do you personally view the relationship between historical racism, family structure, culture, economics, and personal responsibility in explaining present-day disparities?
Sources:
- https://www.kff.org/state-health-policy-data/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0&selectedDistributions=white--black--hispanic--asiannative-hawaiian-or-pacific-islander--american-indian-or-alaska-native--multiple-races&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D
- https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/expanded-homicide