Consider Reardon, Kalogrides & Shores (2019). They found that even in districts where lower-performing groups had higher SES than Whites, they still tended to perform worse.
In this picture, 79% of the mean Black-White gap is independent of SES. At the metro level, 62% was.
It is a pernicious myth that test scores and achievement gaps are mere reflections of geography and that geography plays a major causal role in test scores.
The truth is that their association primarily reflects selection.
The idea is to put large, powerful animals like bulls or lions in the ring with several dogs, and the winner lives.
The sport has existed for thousands of years. One of our first records is of Indians showing it to Alexander the Great.
The first record in England comes from 1610 and features King James I requesting the Master of the Beargarden—a bear training facility—to provide him with three dogs to fight a lion.
Two of the dogs died and the last escaped because the lion did not wish to fight and retreated.
For one, there's no supportive pattern of sanctions. For two, you can develop in near-autarky, and before post-WW2, that was comparatively what the most developed countries were dealing with.