Grew up in the South, around far greater percentage of black people than some here.
As a young adult, I visited New York for the first time, and was surprised at how few black people were there.
With that background, it has to be said that black people experience significant peer pressure among themselves to "fit in" – it was sad, in school, to see the brighter ones jeered when they made an effort in class. There are multiple other examples of how this tradition of "fitting in" affects the black community negatively, but this is the one that breaks teachers' hearts :( Bright students don't experience the encouragement they should. The anti-intellectual sentiment is something in the black community it'd be great for them to leave behind. It's sheer insanity, this thinking that the only options for them are sports and entertainment. That's compounded by the ridiculous amount of money suddenly paid to sports and entertainment figures who have NO idea how to handle it wisely, and are at huge risk of either blowing it quickly or getting victimized by fraudsters and crooked accountants.
The cardiologist who fought through scar tissue and precious few veins to reroute during a third round of bypass surgery, and then was caring and empathetic to my mother and I, and gave my late father another decade on this earth was black, but he was not from the south. Someone, somewhere, encouraged him and thank God they did.