No, I'm saying that it's hard to argue that America is "very racist" when Obama was a two-term president, Kamala Harris is the current vice-president (and quite possibly the 2024 presidential candidate), and black people are at every level of government In fact, black people are slightly over-represented in the House of Representatives, while congress in general has become siginificantly more racially diverse almost every year for the past 20.

I'm not saying that racism no longer exists, I'm saying that it's not an especially significant barrier to success for a young black person in 2021, presuming that they started life with a decent foundation (which is a separate issue). As I said, if you took a black kid and a white kid, born in the past five years to similar economic and social circumstances, I think they'd have similar chances of success.

But yes, the fact that your friend was the kind of person to be looking for excuses to do nothing is exactly why I don't see it as a serious problem that you couldn't convince him. Even if you'd been able to prove the impact of racism beyond a shadow of a doubt, I don't think he'd have done anything about it. Failing to convince somebody who only cares about themselves isn't really much of a loss.

Keep fighting the good fight!