What does "socially determined" mean, and what are the alternatives?
In sports, the rules are whatever we say they are, that’s the part that’s socially determined. Lebron James is a amazing basketball player, due to a combination of his genetics and his hard work. But there’s a parallel reality wherein basketball was never invented. And people enjoy sports like horse racing or marathon running, where he would never be able to be world class given his frame. What sports are popular is based on culture and happenstance, and up to the whims of society, not genetics or hard work of individuals.
For several hundred years, America literally constructed a society where it was decided that white people were considered more valuable than black people. That had nothing to do with what individual black people did, those were just the rules of the game.
You may say “but that’s not how it is anymore”, and yes things have certainly changed. But at the same time, there are people who are alive today who weren’t allowed to attend the same schools as whites, weren’t allowed to drink from the same fountains as whites, etc.
The argument that is being made, is that society continues to favor people based upon the color of their skin. Certainly, individual talents and hard work contribute to one’s place in life, but that does not mean that the playing field is level.
Perhaps the hypotheses should be "maybe there is something in Nigerian/pre-industrial culture that allows children to thrive more than in American/industrialized culture"?
Reading the intent behind that statement, though, that Nigerians have succeeded in America despite any hinderances they may have faced due to wider societies treatment of black people, that would be somewhat outside of the framework of what I am talking about.
The construction here is, do Black Americans have worse outcomes, on average, because of themselves, or because of societies treatment of them. Culture would fall into the bucket of “they are the reason for their own problems”.
Obviously Nigerians do well on average, but they are also a small fraction of the population. Pointing to Nigerians and saying that race isn’t a contributing factor is making an argument after having found the statistical outlier that proves your argument, how do Nigerians compare to the top cohort of white Americans based on ethnicity or whatever? Is it possible that Nigerians would actually be doing better were there not racial barriers?
Black Americans do not have worse outcomes.
Specifically, given the distribution of individuals in the group "Black Americans" across all socially relevant dimensions—including culture—individual Black Americans have identical* outcomes to similarly-situated individuals of every other group in America including Whites, Asians, etc.
As you would expect in a country with equal opportunity for all, both legally and culturally.
*Black Americans actually do better than expected because there's an enormous cultural push to promote Black Americans whenever possible—college admissions, management, etc. not to mention Black Americans being so over-represented in media that most Americans think the country is around 40% Black whereas the actual number is ~13%, i.e. they're off by a factor of 3.
> having found the statistical outlier that proves your argument
Well, why are they a statistical outlier? If you ask Nigerians, they'll tend to credit their culture. Do you have a different explanation?
> Is it possible that Nigerians would actually be doing better were there not racial barriers?
I suppose it's more possible that they should be doing much worse than they are, because of the racial barriers.
I was under the impression that it did add clarity, so I find your question odd.
What would be the charitable interpretation of the statement “socioeconomic disparities between black Americans and white Americans are due to their respective cultures”?
What’s problematic is the degree to which people can’t even entertain the idea that racism is the primary driver of these disparities, rather than things that are specific to POC, such a culture or genetics, especially given the clear and obvious precedent that is firmly established within this country.
What is a reach, is your reaction to this suggestion.
We no longer deny people opportunities based on their race. If your SAT score is high, you'll be admitted anywhere you want. If you study hard, your score will be high. The reach is constructing the SAT, or any other similar test, as racist because the scores are not evenly distributed by race.
The reason why many people cannot accept this is because many other groups experienced problems from racism as well, but they were eventually able to overcome these barriers. Moreover, the system has already changed to be more accommodating, maybe even putting most of their focus and resources on the bottom 20% of students at the expense of everyone else. Yet, we still have people stating that it’s still unfair.