we have seen in the past, during segregation, that they can in fact form families, develop economies, schooling, improve themselves, and thrive. how did all of that just... fall into disarray? it's not *all* gone, but... it's not common to see anymore.
They were sabotaged. Not even joking or exaggerating, it was deliberate, and intentional.
As I understand it, the Great Depression tore the heart out of the black community. They had been very successful in the manufacturing, construction, and maintenance fields. The problem is that those industries fucking cratered during the Depression. In general, Black families operated as extended units, and with the main breadwinners effectively unable to translate their skills to other fields and out of work, the communities that were centered around them fucking collapsed.
It's at this point in our story that along comes a spider, or in this case, the establishment Dems of the time. They did not like that the black families were integrating and doing well; they were staunchly traditional and this made them a very strong oppositional block. Seeing an opportunity, the Dems of the time pushed hard on programs like Welfare, setting them up in such a way that they seemed helpful on the surface of it all, they were actually expressly intended to kneecap the black community's recovery. Shithead grifters whose sole response to every crisis was "Blame Whitey" thrived in this environment, and it was this critical lynchpin that started the ball rolling on a lot of the problems we see today.
That is a start, but it is so much worse than that.
Welfare, as a system, is designed to not be survivable... if you are married. Being married combines your resources, while actually reducing your costs. It's a main bedrock of being able to pull yourself out of a slump. Welfare meanwhile takes the increased benefits, says you may no longer have welfare, and the result is a net reduction. You get -less- by marrying.
And it's designed that way.
Imagine the effect, a black families manufacturing job craters, the result is they go on welfare, this family stays together but can barely make ends meet. The children grow up in poverty. When they get old enough to marry, these ones look at marriage, but it would cost them and the jobs still aren't there, they haven't come back. So they put off marrying, and the next generation arises inevitably.
Now repeat, with lowering and lowering marriage rates and an increasingly large issue of families simply not existing, And in the end, the gibs aren't just because 'free shit', its because actually marrying and getting off the gibs is -no longer an option- without a lot of work. It's one pillar of the community, just gone.
But we don't end there. You can knock out as much as two of the four pillars of the community and pull yourself out. And I could go at length about how the other three have been systematically assaulted to ensure that blacks 'stay in their place'.
The current plight of black Americans may be perpetuated by them, but they sure as fuck didn't get there by their own fault.