There are a few facets to wage, wealth, and education disparities that have always been quite interesting to me (first we must recognize that the history of marginalization of African Americans in this country is more severe than most other groups, just wanted to get that out of the way.) There are a number of recognized minority groups in the US, African Americans, Jews, Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans are perhaps the most recognized. Throughout the history of this nation, each of these groups faced a period of oppression, none of which rivaled being enslaved, yet there have been serious social barriers placed in front of these minority groups. In many areas, at a point in time, Asian immigrants were forced into ghettos or moved out of neighborhoods, we essentially banned the entry of Chinese into this country for about 60 years. We are well versed in the plight of the Native American population of this country, they were displaced and forced onto reservations, losing vast resources and tens of thousands of lives. Similarly, there was an aggressive anti-Jewish period where their "name" was placed next to the word "N" on signs warning them that they were unwelcome in certain public settings. Hispanics in the Southwest were treated like slave labor, removed from their lands, and largely segregated from the white hordes that moved into their territory and to this day, many view Hispanics as third class citizens.
When we break down these ethnic groups/races of people data tells us that by far Native Americans have fared the worse economically with poverty rates of almost 40% for those who live on reservations. Native Americans experience higher rates of substance abuse than other demographic groups and have the second highest homicide rate... It is hard to compare the plight of the Native American community to that of any other of the minority groups in the US. African Americans, statistically, enjoy the second worse rate of poverty at roughly 25%, the highest homicide rates of any minority group (52% of all murders were committed by African American Assailants in 2016), and substance abuse rates of roughly 13%, depending on the data you review. Hispanics have it fairly rough too with higher homicide and poverty rates than the national average... Then you have average white people.
But, then the data show that in spite of the prejudice, Jewish households have a median net worth of over $400,000 compared to the $99,500 for the US. The community has low incarceration rates and I couldn't fond too much on substance abuse. Asians, broadly, seem to be the most successful group in the US. In 2017, according to the BLS, Asian men earned 26% more in weekly earnings than white males, 79% more than Hispanic males, and 82% more than African American males (this is across all education levels and industry sectors.) It is also fairly well known that Asians, on average, score higher on standardized tests, are more likely to hold college degrees and advanced degrees than other demographics.
I've often wondered what has led to these huge discrepancies in outcomes. Some of it would seem to be predicated on the degree of past oppression on the individual group, some of it would seem to be based on a "prejudiced" system, and other aspects of it would seem to be based on other social constructs. To me, certain sociological factors seem play a strong hand, for example, there has been a great deal of discussion regarding single parent households, some sociologists are adamantly fighting against this notion that two parent households make a difference, but Asians, as a group, are the least likely to come from a single parent household, 16%, then non-Hispanic whites, 24%, Hispanics, 42%, Native Americans, 52%, and Blacks, 66%. There has been a of banter about "cultural bias" in testing, but this seems to fall to the wayside when considering SAT scores among Hispanic and Asian students are higher than those achieved by African American students. Asian American students also score much higher than Whites.
With regard to wealth accumulation, one aspect that doesn't get discussed much is savings rates, there are studies
Link that show that at the same income levels, African Americans and Hispanics save less than white households, this coupled with larger inheritances, helps for Whites to amass greater wealth than their African American and Hispanic counterparts...
I have literally run out of time... My question, or position, is it seems there are many factors that drive the success or failure of minority populations. In the US is prejudice by whites and a system that favors whites above others truly the issue or are there other sociological/cultural factors at work that lead to the outcomes that we see.