Your statement is better sourced and supported by data but I was about to say that black men die young in disproportionately large numbers (drugs, gangs, etc) and that skews the numbers. It’s like the old idea that life expectancy in the middle ages was 40ish. That’s technically accurate but misleading mostly because so many people didn’t survive childhood. Adults by and large lived well beyond 40 but all the child mortality totally skews the numbers. And so it is with black men.
Your explanation rings true. I suspected something like that, and that’s what prompted me to look up the stats.