If you listen to the right wing media they will tell you eti African Americans are just lazy and crime prone which is why they do not prosper.
However life is not that simple. There are a number of factors holding AAs back some of which are self inflicted and some inflicted by society and some by the government.
One of the issues not often discussed is mass incarceration for minor offences. Politicians who want to be seen as "tough on crime" create stupid laws that send poor minorities to prison for relatively minor offences like being caught with 3 ounces of marijuana.
The net results is that American jails are full of AAs who were arrested for offences that most white people do not even get arrested for. And once a person goes to jail, the arrest remains on his record and it becomes impossible to find a job because most employers do background checks.
If a person cannot get a job, chances are he will go to hard crime to earn a living. Also being in prison for a long time turns peopple into hardened criminals.
And it takes grown men away from their children which means the children who no longer have parental guidance are also likely to stray into crime. A classic vicious cycle.
America is screwed up when it comes to mass incaceration. It has the highest prison population in the world and also by far the highest per capita.
Kenya has a high crime rate yet America sends people to prison at a rate that is 7 times higher than Kenya.
This is going to be a campaign issue in 2016 and Hillary Clinton has already broached the subject
Here is Hill Clinton on the subject :
link