People often confuse correlation and causation. Historically, since minorities were poorer, behaviors attributable to economic status and education were wrongly associated with race. Since there was a positive correlation.

Similar problems exist today with climate change vs weather change. There are many weather cycles that occur over decades and in some cases longer, that are not a function of climate change, but are attributed to climate change. Climate change is real, but it is not the reason behind event that the media attributes to it.

Only by bothering to study the causes of things rather than the association between two variables, can we get to the truth.