The real reason my startup was successful: privilege
medium.com
medium.com
Did wearing hand-me-down clothes prevent others from doing the same? Did your parents having dinner with you stop other parents for doing the same for their kids? Did your parents staying married and (likely) having you while married stop others from making those same choices to their children's advantage? And on and on.
Yes, things happen in nearly everyone's lives that help them and all success takes some measure of luck and bravery, but how many people were in your exact same position and ended up somewhere else?
Then it becomes less of a guilt thing, than a 'recognize a systemic bias' thing. I agree, the very term 'white privilege' is intended to offend. I think it was chosen because its effective in prodding the middle class into thinking about the issues?
Generational choices will affect you, just as your choices will affect your children. Studies show that if you wait to have kids until marriage, don't do drugs, finish high school, and work you will be in the middle class in the US - a pretty privileged place to be on a global basis. And those choices will have a positive impact on your kids as well.
There's no denying some people have advantages, but everyone has a chance to get ahead and better their situation and the lives of their children. And I think that's what really bothers me about the "privilege" point of view - it pushes people to justify their situation based on the hand they were dealt, not what they did with it.
Based on the stats, the system is rigged to favor one class: Asians. Earnings, credit scores, advanced degrees, longevity - Americans of Asian descent are kicking butt in every category. Those darn founding Asians shouldn't have set up the system to favor their progeny. And the white poor really need to start using their privilege correctly.
E.g. easy to say "just stay in school!" from our suburban ivory tower, miles away from the dangerous decaying underfunded overcrowded inner city schools.
Its this blindness to the problems and issues of growing up a minority in a poor area, that leads to victim-blaming. Remember, we're talking about kids. They aren't going to make all the good choices if there's nobody home in the poor single-parent household to guide them.
> They aren't going to make all the good choices if there's nobody home in the poor single-parent household to guide them.
Good point. How do you fix this?
Precisely. My wife works in one of the exact kind of schools (in exactly the kind of neighborhood) JoeAltmaier mentions. Some parents, regardless of where they're coming from, make it clear to their children that education is a priority, ensure their children arrive at school on time each day dressed in clean clothes, and that their homework is completed. Other parents do not make this effort. It's heartbreaking that it's true, but there's nothing anyone but their parents can do about it. Yes, those children are being put at a disadvantage in life - there's zero denying it. And it's tragic.
As you correctly point out, these attitudes and priorities have nothing to do with race. If it's privilege, it's more appropriately called decision privilege.
Compound this with discrimination ("Most X people I see don't value education, so I won't bother trying with their children") and you have the whole 'white privilege' package tied up in a bow.
We're all agreeing here; sensible people don't confuse opportunity with race. But there are a whole lot of not-sensible people out there, who take simple correlation and conclude "X people are stupid" or whatever.
In the end its about fixing the problem. Its not clear that the 'white privilege' label is helping much. Maybe just to get conversations like this one going?
Until we accept something like that, the best we can do is try to reduce the 'cultural' aspects of bad-parenting, but that's all.
> these attitudes and priorities have nothing to do with race
they correlate with race - sometimes. It's the ambiguous nature of 'culture'.
But privilege appears to me to refer specifically to opportunity. "decision privilege" seems contradictory in that respect; especially with things like "getting pregnant at a young age" and "having children outside marriage" - I think these are actually "behavioral privilege" (living in a culture/environment that values/encourages certain behavior), which does not fit the usual narratives and semantics around the word 'privilege', one of which is, change can only come from within the community, and resistance to change is not imposed from outside.
However if you want to encourage other people to become entrepreneurs, or give advice to some new entrepreneur, it's important to remember that you can't just read on what successful entrepreneurs did and tell them to copy from them. Their techniques might have worked because of dumb luck (survivor bias) or because of some advantage they took for granted (privilege)
That's why people caring about privilege isn't always nonsense. They want to know which factors of success can be imitated, and how to compensate for the factors that cannot.
"Did wearing hand-me-down clothes prevent others from doing the same?" Him personally, no. The point of his article is that part of the reason his parents could give him these advantages is because the were white and not affected by racism.
Likewise you could ask "how many people were in your exact same position and ended up somewhere else?", but he's asking "how many people weren't in your exact same position, due to the racism of the past, and ended up somewhere else?"
My mistake. I didn't realize it was being white that allowed his parents to have him after marriage, stay married, and provide him with hand-me-down clothes. If only I had known the melanin levels in your skin had such an affect on behavior!
And I don't appreciate your snarky tone. It's uncalled for.
The things mentioned are things not affected by racism. There are no racists encouraging blacks not to marry.
All of which is ignoring what the author wrote about, which is pretty clear:
>If my ancestors had not been White, there is a good chance I would never have been able to start a business. Just two generations ago mortgage and lending discrimination were widespread. It is unlikely my grandfather would have been able to start a business as a Black man. I probably wouldn’t have grown up the same neighborhood with the same schools as a result.
>My wife’s grandmother would almost certainly have not been able to buy the land she used to fund my business if she had not been White. Her husband probably wouldn’t have gotten the promotion to school superintendent and been given the higher salary to afford the loan on the land either.
You can feel guilty about other people having less than you if you really want to, but the author isn't suggesting that.
It is unfortunate that so many people jump immediately to feelings of guilt when considering privilege. A better response would be thankfulness for blessings received that you did not deserve and that not everyone gets. No matter your position in life, there are people who have been given more than you and less than you. I think the only useful response to understanding this reality is to feel thankful for what you have been given and to work to help others who received less.
Secondly, I think one way to look at success is as the product of two factors: privilege and work/ability. I'm intelligent and I worked incredibly hard on my startup, but that is only one half of the equation. If I had multiplied those things by a privilege value approaching zero, there is a good chance my success would have also been close to zero.
I had a moderately high level of privilege. Many people have significantly more than I do. Many people (including White people) have significantly less. The specific point I was trying to make in the article is that if I had been given less privilege, I do not believe I would have been as successful as I was. And without any privilege, I am fairly certain I would not have been successful at all.
1. Please don't read this as an attempt to speak for all White people. Or all men. No one can do that. We all have unique stories that trace their roots back through history. If I don't know you personally there is a good chance I don’t know anything about your story either. I don't presume to speak for anyone but myself.
2. I am in no way trying to say that my privilege comes purely from being White or that all White people have the same privilege as me. Many aspects of my personal privilege have nothing to do with my skin color. I absolutely benefit from the hard work and smart decisions of people in my family that came before me.
3. It is hard to argue that statistically a disproportionate number of non-White people get the short end of the stick when it comes to generational wealth and privilege in America, but again, everyone’s story is unique. There are plenty of people who are born with way more privilege than me. Not all of them are White.
4. I think guilt is the wrong response to privilege. Gratefulness is a much better response. Privilege is something given to you, that you did not deserve, and that not everyone gets. You don’t feel guilty when someone gives you a beautiful gift, you feel thankful. Maybe even loved. In an ideal world, those with privilege would have such a strong response of gratefulness that it would move them to kindness toward others. It certainly motivates me to work to make the world a better place—not out of guilt, but out of thankfulness for the undeserved blessings in my life.
When we tell our own narrative it is easy to be blind to environmental success factors because we grew up among them and they were always there. As natural as air to breath almost.
and environmental failure factors too.
I admit it. I am privileged. I thank the Cosmos everyday for the incredibly wonderful life I live and my biggest fear is of losing it. I support social services that try to raise those people up out of poverty, homelessness, or institutional racism. I don't do that out of guilt, but for a genuine concern for the well-being of my fellow human beings who I rely upon every single day for my own well-being. That fast-food work who serves me meals is working much harder for less income than I am, and I appreciate and respect that.
This helps illustrate that the basic building block of society/economy is more so the family than the individual.
So, I don't see how you can both accept the account as given and say it's merely an issue of generational wealth.
I accept his account, and I applaud him for reaching out to those he feels don't have the same opportunity that he had.
Often this type of thinking leads people to believe that violence today will solve the violence of yesterday.