Actually, I heard similar point being made by many Jamaican or African immigrants who contrast themselves with the US Blacks by pointing toothier own academic or business success. Such argument, imho, poke a hole in the receive wisdom that "racism" is somehow responsible for the economic condition of many US blacks. If Black immigrants can make it (as well as some US Blacks), then "racism" is not a good explanation why other cannot.
A good explanation is the "culture of poverty" argument, first proposed by Oscar Lewis in the 1960s (which btw has nothing to do with distortions and clichés associated with this concept in popular discourse). This argument not only links current condition to learned behavior (as opposed to supposedly innate traits) but offers a link to macro-social factors, such as segregationist policies of the 1950s that created urban ghettos, which in turn are incubators of the "culture of poverty." Folks who grew outside such environment (immigrants) or managed to escape it (US Blacks) tend to do better as a group than those who did not.
However, admitting that is inconvenient for both government people (who would then have to take responsibility for their segregationist policies that created ghettoes) and many black leaders and activists (who would have to abandon the trite trope of "racism" as the one-size-fits-all explanation of everything that's going on in Black communities).
Wojtek