My pleasure, I'm always willing to talk to people in good-faith. But you've got this completely backwards, and hopefully I can explain to you how, and at the same time, explain why many black people don't engage with arguments about whether racism is real.
Warning, this is a long one. Also, it might sound accusatory in places but it's honestly not meant to be. It's difficult to talk about this without occasional hints of frustration. I don't know you, so nothing is directed specifically at you.
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When we see disparities of this size: black people rejected at twice the rate, black CEO's at only 1%, we're not surprised. We're not surprised because we KNOW racism exists. Every single one of us has experienced it. Even those of us who have done well for ourselves in life. Racism doesn't dominate every aspect of our day. It doesn't guarantee our failure, not at all, but it's there.
I'd say I've led a reasonably charmed life, but I've had teachers who couldn't believe (genuinely had to look it up) that I was top of my class. My first day at university (I'd made it onto a special course in maths and physics, only seven others in the class), my professor took one look at me (I turned up a couple of minutes late) and said, "Sorry, I think you're in the wrong class". I had numerous bosses when I was younger who were surprised when I was competent, but still promoted people who were obviously less so. We're asked to prove ourselves time and time again, even when we're exceptional.
Every black person you know has stories like this. So to us, this isn't a debate in any ordinary sense. We can't be persuaded that we're wrong about the things that have happened to us and the other black people we know. We're being asked to prove them to YOU. And as you've never experienced racism first hand, we're forced to rely on statistics to reveal disparities.
So we think, "Okay, surely if I show this guy that we're twice as likely to be rejected for a business loan, or only 1% of us make it into the top jobs, he'll see that there's something going on." But what invariably happens is we get explanations which, though quite possible contributing factors, can't possible explain the size of the disparities unless you assume that black people are hopelessly inferior to white people.
For instance, yes, black children lag behind in schools. For a number of reasons. Does that explain a 1:99 disparity to you? Does it honestly make sense that the system is a pure meritocracy and us poor incompetent black folks are only able to make the grade 1 out of every 100 times?
To answer your question with a question, how often does CEO come up in white culture? 100 times more often? What happens is that people get jobs, they work hard, they get promoted, and hopefully, they land that top job. But that trajectory relies on the path being open. It relies on all of the white people you meet on the way up not being racist. If only a few of them are, that top job isn't coming to you. The same is true for women and people with disabilities and all manner of things. Society isn't a meritocracy, everybody struggles, but it's closest to being a meritocracy if you're a white man. This point is self-evident to most people yet we could argue the minutiae of it for eternity.
Or with business loans, the article you read clearly acknowledges racism, but you cherry pick the only non discriminatory factor and say, "well what about this?" No sane black person thinks that every problem we face is 100% racism. There are vanishingly few people who think that. But if you come with a mindset of "racism doesn't exist", you force us to persuade you of something that we know exists and that you don't really want to believe exists. After a few tries, we learn to recognise that style of conversation and just duck out of it.
So as I said at the beginning, you've got this backwards. You're asking me to prove, beyond any doubt, that racism is a factor in disparities that we only have a few numbers for. You're asking me to prove something that I know exists to somebody who's never experienced it. It's as if I were tyring to convince you that the colour blue existed but you'd had a condition that meant you couldn't see it. I could tell you about the wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that it corresponds to. I could describe objects that are blue. I could show you the missing part of a rainbow. But you'd always be able to argue.
You could always ask me to prove how it was different to green or violet. You could insist it was my eyes that were the problem. You could tell me that there was supposed to be a gap in the rainbow. When it comes right down to it, if you don't want to do a doctorate in societal disparities in the film industry or rates of loan acceptance, racism is something you'll either have to take black people's word for or not. Again, there's room to discuss ways to correct for it (blind auditions are one), we can debate (likely not very fruitfully) how big a factor it is in various situations. We can talk about the historical impact of racism. But black people have nothing to gain from this discussion. We see blue all the time.
