In one (or two) words: True. (Mostly).
[I’m fact-checking the claim American Blacks are better off than those in any other country. This is often used as push back to the BLM claim that nothing has improved since slavery days]
I looked at GDP per capita of 54 African countries compared with the GDP per capita of the Black community in America.
On the basis of nominal GDP ($US):
United States: Black or African American: $23,303. African: $2,639. American Blacks 8.8 times more GDP per capita than Africans in Africa.
On the basis of GDP by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) ($US):
United States: Black or African American: $23,303. African: $6,167. American Blacks 3.8 times more GDP per capita than in Africans in Africa.
[PPP corrects nominal GDP to allow for that fact that purchasing power is different in different countries. A thousand dollars buys a lot more in Equatorial Guinea than it does in New York]
In short: American Blacks are 4 to 9 times better off than their cousins in Africa. I added the qualifier “Mostly” because in two countries, Equatorial Guinea and the Seychelles, the GDP per capita in PPP terms, is a little higher than that of Black in the US.
Of course there’s more to life than money. But it’s often put forward by BLM and their allies, that Blacks in America are no better off than they were a century ago, that things are as dire as plantation slavery. We need to look at the data and acknowledge where it shows otherwise. Which it does.
Black Americans are substantially better off than their cousins in Africa. In terms of free speech they are also better off, as we can see from the prominence of BLM movement itself.
ADDED: and acknowledged: that I haven’t compared with other large Black communities, as in the UK, which I’ll do in due course and update.
