On the topic of the facts involved with blacks and poverty, I'd say the facts are not persuasive because enough confounding variables exist that allow for different interpretations.
A lot of this stuff can get figured out with just the facts. For example the facts probably do not show increasing racism correlating with increasing black poverty. Like Sowell discusses, the opposite has happened, racism has been declining while black poverty has been increasing. There are some facts that counter, like a positive correlation between the drug war and black poverty. I don't know if this correlation is real, but I think it might be. I think we should focus on interpreting these types of statistics as best we can. For example, the claim is common that there aren't that many black fathers anymore because theyre all in prison. Well, okay, so, one thing that implies is that drug dealers would become fathers if they didn't get caught. Well, that doesn't make sense. We can look at other facts, like how the theme is very well-known by blacks (as far as I know) that male promiscuity is big and fatherhood is very unpopular. That ain't gonna be caused by the police.
The best economic explanation I know of by a long shot is that of welfare, which is probably why such a prominent economist like Sowell discusses it so much. When you pay women to be single mothers, what are you going to get? Is that the only factor? No. Though it makes the most sense as the most pivotal factor. Like Sowell says, blacks were overcoming the factor of racism just fine for quite a while. Even though it is relevant, it isn't what pivoted the communities into ghettos.
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