Thank you for reading and responding. Your statement:

"Any discussion on equality for the uniquely American community known as African Americans (*SEE DEFINITION BELOW*) is stymied by a fixation now hardened into orthodoxy to expose what America is doing to black communities (e.g., discrimination, institutional racism, and economic circumstances, etc.) (aka structural causation) while ignoring the role of self-perpetuating norms and behaviors (aka cultural causation) upon this distressed community."

Is racist in its implications. In the absence of an acknowldgement of systemic racism, it basically boils down to telling black people it is their fault for slavery, segregation, convict leasing, Jim Crow, and the current racial stereotypes they must deal with.

A full explanation of racial inequality will start with the environment that whites created for blacks - systemic racism. This environment is what black people then had to respond to (culture).