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Comment by tathougies | Hacker News Reader

I guess I find the shock that this worked out rather strange. My parents immigrated to this country 30 something years ago. My dad was a salesman and my mother a teacher and they managed to raise two children, send us to private school (catholic, so cheaper than others), pay for music lessons, support my grandparents and aunt who lived with us for a while, and sponsor my entire family. And they owned their home and bought land.

The fact is that americans are not very frugal people and waste their money. If immigrants who came to this country in the 80s managed to do this, there is no excuse for a native born American. My mother even went to college again because her degree wasnt accepted and she wanted to be a teacher. Thrift and sacrifice go a long way

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Worth remembering that housing (and I presume land) is far more expensive than it used to be.

https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/valu...

Perhaps that's true, but given my parents immigrated here at 30 with no money, and managed to do it, I don't feel that is really an excuse for me, since I have an 8 year head start.

Like I said, thrift. We were certainly poorer than our friends and had less stuff. Americans do not like that idea.

>no excuse for a native born American

Racial disparities along with systemic racism could provide an explanation. Attained education levels as well. Just some thoughts.

Immigrants' racial makeup would, on average, predispose them to more systematic racism (in the negative direction) than native-born Americans, no? Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say.

The comment is vague, but I interpreted systemic racism as a function of slavery > failed reconstruction > black codes > sharecropping > 100-year effort to legislate the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments > Civil Rights Act of 1965 > manipulating property titles/deeds to circumvent legal protections around right to own property > mass incarceration... small points debatable, but clear historical and empirical through line since late 18th century.

EDIT: All of these things affect immigrants of color (who may come from worst circumstance) but they have a “blank slate”, not fighting a legacy.

A friend of mine's grandparents retired quite comfortably after selling the Chinese food restaurant they ran for many years. They were farmers in China but after the second time an invading army took everything they decided not to stick around for the third strike. They showed up in a dying rust belt city without the ability to read and write English, say nothing of cultural differences and they did just fine.

The point of this anecdote is to point out what we often take for granted. Even if a sizable minority of Americans are subject to systemic racism native born Americans at least have the ability to transact business in English which gives them a pretty good head start and I think that on average that more than make up for a systemic disadvantage applied to a fraction of the population.

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