&gt;<i>A mere 70 years ago Jews were being chased through Europe and killed like dogs.</i><p>However all of them were white, educated (a lot of them highly educated), and managed to migrate to places where they fit with white society and were not persecuted for being jews anymore. Blacks didn&#x27;t have that.<p>&gt;<i>The roots may be from Jim Crow and such but the lack of progress is disheartening and seemingly intractable.</i><p>Well, lack of progress is relative. From just-freed slaves, peniless and uneducated, now there is a decent black middle class.<p>But if your grantparents were dead poor (think Jim Crow blacks in the South in the 20&#x27;s and 40&#x27;s), then you don&#x27;t get to jump that far in a 3 generations.<p>Especially if your father had to face discrimination (in schooling, hiring, loans etc) up until the seventies or even more.<p>Latinos have the same problems.<p>Jews, Italians, Irish not so much -- they started from much better position than slaves, and they are white so could fit in to business etc better. Besides they didn&#x27;t originate from places like Alabama, Mississippi, like most of blacks who migrated North did etc -- they came to NY, Chicago etc.