That’s absurd. You don’t actually disagree with my basic point, it seems, but your problem is that you know (because you are psychic?) that my reference to the successes of Africans and Afro-Caribbeans is not coming from a place of empathy, but rather, is just being used to justify my take on the failures of American-born African Americans.

First of all, I have no idea why empathy is even relevant here. This is a matter of logic, not your or my feelings. If groups of people with the same superficial racial characteristics as American-born black people are very successful in America, which is just a fact, then it seems the problem we have might be something other than racism, right? If it’s not racism and it’s not biology, what’s left? Culture.

Second, I have no idea why you decided that I don’t have genuine empathy for the African and Afro-Caribbean people I’m talking about. I don’t believe in empathy for an entire group of people (like, I don’t have empathy for white people as a group either), and that kind of racially based empathy seems silly to me, but I do have lots of empathy for the numerous specific people I know who happen to belong to the African and Afro-Caribbean categories, many of whom are amazing people I’ve had the pleasure of being acquainted with over the years and some of whom are very close lifelong friends. I don’t know what that proves … other than that you’re wrong that when I’m speaking about these people, I’m just using them as examples to knock someone else down. No, I have genuine, heart-felt respect for people like this, people who happen to be much like my parents, who came to this country as immigrants with nothing and having nothing handed to them and knowing no one and made it all on their own through lots of hard work. And I have genuine contempt for the pathetic lazy losers of every race who sit around collecting government benefits and expect everything to get given to them and complain and blame others or the system or “systemic racism" when they are not rewarded for their lack of effort. And I have still more contempt for the elite white limousine liberals who were born into wealth and unearned privilege and feel guilty about it, and to work off that guilt, turn themselves into big fake warriors for what they think is racial justice to take the side of the members of this lazy underclass. They’re contributing to the total destruction of this country and its ethos of merit bringing success (always an ideal that was only partially realized but one well worth preserving and perfecting), and they’re not doing any real favors for the underclass they claim to champion but which they are, in reality, condescendingly infantilizing. That’s where I’m coming from.