Thomas Sowell has taught me more about critical thinking than any other source/person ever has. He is a personal hero of mine being neither partisan nor ideologue but brilliant in his approach to evaluating the situation that exists in any context.
For sure he and one of his best friends, Walter E. Williams PhD (RIP), have nailed why people with dark skins have not prospered as much as they could have:
1) Interference from politicians/do gooders who made victims of black people and persuaded them to stop doing what would allow them to lift themselves out of poverty or other disadvantages.
2. Demands that black people speak, dress, think, behave, see themselves as BLACK instead of as mainstream American citizens. When they are also required to see themselves as oppressed, victims, eternally disadvantaged, that further aggravates the problems they create for themselves that holds them back as a demographic.
Black people who reject both of those traps almost always fair as well as any other U.S. citizens.