Sadly, though, fewer people can imagine and understand how systematized deprivation of opportunity virtually guarantees that a majority of African-Americans and other minorities as well as growing numbers of increasingly poor white Americans — will lead lives whose difficulties are barely imaginable to those of us who are well off. This is not mysterious, however; it’s simply a question of economics and of budgets and of inequality.

The argument here is a summary of that made by the economist John Komlos; it’s straightforward, logical, nondoctrinaire, irrefutable, and goes like this: If you’re born in a bad neighborhood you will go to a bad school; if you go to a bad school you will get a bad education; if you get a bad education you will get a bad job, or none at all; thus you will have a low (or no) income; with low income you have no wealth (it’s more likely you will have debt). And so … your children, and theirs, are likely to live in bad neighborhoods. Without education or jobs.

And — since I’m the food guy, it’s worth pointing out — without access to good food or nutrition education. This is murder by a thousand cuts. The rate of hunger among black households: 10.1 percent. Among white households: 4.6 percent. The age-adjusted rate of obesity among black Americans: 47.8 percent. Among white Americans: 32.6 percent. The rate of diabetes among black adults aged 20 or older: 13.2 percent. Among white adults: 7.6 percent. Black Americans’ life expectancy, compared to white Americans: four years less. (The life expectancy of black men with some high school compared to white men with some college: minus 14 years.)

These numbers are not a result of a lack of food access but of an abundance of poverty. Lack of education is not a result of a culture of victimhood but of lack of funding for schools. And rather than continuing to allow these realities to divide us, we should do the American thing, which is to fix things. Which we can do, together.

Not long ago African-Americans were enslaved; until recently they were lynched. Isolated racist murders still occur, but they are no longer sanctioned or tolerated, and we’re seeing the vestiges of that as both national and local attention is paid to violence by the police against black people.

But oppression and inequality are violence in another form. When people are undereducated, impoverished, malnourished, un- or under-employed, or underpaid and working three jobs, their lives are diminished, as are their opportunities. As are the opportunities of their children.

This is unjust and intolerable. The bad news is that we should be ashamed of ourselves: As long as these things are true, this is not the country we say it is or the country we want it to be.

The good news is that it’s fixable, not by “market forces” but by policies that fund equal education, good-paying jobs, and a good food, health and well-being program for all Americans.