Whiteness - Before we go too deep into this, consider: Go outside US & Western Europe, and you'll quickly find many countries where there's an extremely strong segregation and racism between the different "white" races, which are supposedly all one group. Telling those 50+ races that they're actually all one group looks like obvious gerrymandering of the cluster boundaries. Arbitrary gerrymandering allows one to come to arbitrary conclusions.

Might even take it further, the ability of the US to strip away the cultural identity of these white races within its borders, so that they can't tell each other apart and can't revert to race problems that exist between these white races in most of the world - that's a huge success!

Black vs white - The problem is rather obvious, the education system and educational requirements are the cause. In particular, the path to the PHD, and the reliance on citations afterward. Both are extremely committee-driven processes, i.e. having to be accepted by numerous people and even a single major detractor can be extremely damaging. What most in the US don't realize, is that the vast majority of the world outside of the US & Western Europe is still extraordinarily openly racist and that's not changing any time soon. The committee approach breaks down due to this.

Solution? Drop the PHD / Masters requirement for being taken seriously in the field, and allow substitute accomplishments or signs of potential. E.g. some top-tier financial firms in NYC have done exactly this for decades, no degree being strictly required, and have far "better" race ratios for their top-tier workers as a result.