Here's something to explore, and hear the subtleties because I am coming at this from an oblique angle. Who stands to gain from Black folks' being poor? The answer to this question is the same answer to all the stuff that Dr. Robert Lustig attacks in his book Metabolical. As long as the government and case workers and all kinds of folks are valued, paid, feted for all their work with the po' Black folks, there is ZERO interest in uplifting them. Let me give you an analogy: a friend of mine developed a remarkable machine, which I own, which would have allowed injured and sidelined Air Force pilots to be returned to the cockpit at full ability. When he took that to the Air Force Academy the idea got shitcanned by a female LTC who had a slew of people who were utterly dependent upon her for care. Heal the pilots, she's out of a job. The whole thing got kicked out, the pilots are still in recovery, and she won. They lost.

For Black folks this has at its heart Kipling's White Man's Burden. As long as White folks get to be heroes by saving those ignorant, poor, Black folks ,there is NO motivation to change that narrative. I know you know this. It's just a different facet of White Supremacy, but inhabited by do-gooders doing bad things to people who Don't. Fucking. NEED. Them. They need those do gooders to stop being part of the problem.

But that's just me.