They are usually also the lighter cases (less unstable situations), with a least some parental support, and also the ones who got a few more lucky breaks.
In the end, though, they ascribe it all to their "hard work" and ignore those things -- condemning those less fortunate. Mostly like privileged stable upper middle class students do.
What a caustic statement! Blinded by this much vitriol you are blindly ascribing your opinion to whatever aspect of the issue you feel.
For every "privileged" student, there are "less fortunate" who get a tax break, a student discount, a grant or whatever. The world is a bit more dynamic than you paint it to be.
"Caustic", "vitriol", "blinded", etc. There's nothing complicated about what I wrote. Some people get to play life in easy mode, others don't.
To give an easy example, some kids in the 40s, say, were born into post-slavery poverty, racism, segregation and Jim Crow laws for example. Would you say they should be just as likely to go to college and succeed as some silver-spoon fed upper middle class kid, and if they didn't it's their fault?
While "de jure" segregation doesn't hold anymore, it's not that much better for million of young kids in the projects even today.
>For every "privileged" student, there are "less fortunate" who get a tax break, a student discount, a grant or whatever. The world is a bit more dynamic than you paint it to be.
All these things (tax breaks, student discounts, grants) don't substitute having money, a stable family to support you, the encouragement you need early on as a child, and a good school and neighborhood in your youth.
Privileged students have all these by default (their families are simply educated, white, well-off, etc), the less fortunate students only get a chance at this if they manage to be able to go to college in the first place, which means they have already defeated the odds.
After all affluent kids have also downright bought degrees and college admission, by paying teachers, having their parents give donations to the school, etc.
And that this holds regardless of "hard work" and "intelligent decisions for the future"?
E.g. even if both make the exact same good decisions, the poor kid has to work harder to overcome what it lacked in encouragement, financial ease to just study, parental support, the need to get a job to pay the rent even while at college, etc.
While my family stressed the importance of education while growing up and the ghetto provided a great example of what I didn't want for my life, I didn't have familial support in steering me towards intelligent decisions- in fact I had numerous family members actively trying to sabotage my endeavors to go to college because they wanted me to start a family. I was 100% on my own in all respects, it sucked but hard work and smart decisions paid off for me.
Are you unable to recognize that your experiences may not be in line with everyone else's?
> I do not buy the crap or the "poor me, poor me!" sob stories about how minorities are so disadvantaged when they had a HUGE advantage over me, and were better off than middle class kids when it came to college funding.
Again, you're an edge case. "I had it rough so clearly there isn't an issue with racial minorities getting through college." This is a really close-minded thought process.
> Oh and we're not talking community college or state university, we're talking the most difficult of all scenarios: a private university where your yearly tuition (just tuition) was just under 30k per year at the time, it is now over 36k.
My first thought would be "Why this guy complaining about how hard he has it and then going to an expensive, over priced school?"
> I was 100% on my own in all respects, it sucked but hard work and smart decisions paid off for me.
Nobody is saying you didn't work hard or make good choices. Nobody is saying ethnic minorities can avoid working hard or making good choices. The point is that simply working hard and making good choices is not enough (hence the whole point of this article).
Oh I agree, most of the poor had MUCH more money through financial aid and easier circumstances than I.
>Again, you're an edge case. "I had it rough so clearly there isn't an issue with racial minorities getting through college." This is a really close-minded thought process.
No, I had it rougher than most. Though, I'm not an edge case- I'm fairly typical for those of my ethnic and financial demographic: poor single mom, ghetto neighborhood, and crappy adult guidance. Perfectly typical. Furthermore I'm not the only kid from my neighborhood to make it, before I moved I ran into lots of other kids from my junior high. 30% are now in STEM jobs, with 50% in much better socioeconomic condition form which they were born in to. The other 50% I've not run into since. There were some who slipped through the cracks, like one jerkface who's dream in life was to be a gang member, then dropped out and lived his dream until he got shot, and another who decided it was more financially viable to take over his brother's drug dealing post than take a full scholarship to Fordham. There's more but in short you can't save them all from themselves, especially the ones who make it a choice to be a loser. Everyone has options and financial aid does put poor minorities on equal footing with the middle class for higher education. If it were a middle class kid who screwed up their life despite being given these same chances to attend college but squandered it (by dropping our or picking a crummy major) we'd call him/her a "loser" or a "screw-up".
>My first thought would be "Why this guy complaining about how hard he has it and then going to an expensive, over priced school?"
That's a ridiculous notion on your part. Your first thought should have been: "If this poor person from the ghetto made it though the most difficult of all financial scenarios in higher education, what's excuse do poor ethnic minorities (who get more financial aid) have?"
>Nobody is saying you didn't work hard or make good choices. Nobody is saying ethnic minorities can avoid working hard or making good choices. The point is that simply working hard and making good choices is not enough (hence the whole point of this article).
Some are saying that working hard and making good choice don't matter, that is utterly false and wholly insulting to anyone who is self-made from humble roots. If you look at the article do you feel the parent who encouraged their kid to major in Theater was making a good choice? SERIOUSLY? Other than rehearsing the line "do you want fries with that" in preparation for a lifetime of failure, what good would that major do? That is a perfect example of stupid choices with dire consequences. I've seen lots of middle class college students make this kind of mistake as well. "Oh! I'm going to major in Medieval Instrumental Arts!"
But they're also playing under quite different chances and difficulty levels, and facing much different odds. Heck, they're really playing a different game, period.
What's hard to understand about a kid from a well off middle class family with 2 educated and working parents who put money aside for their kid's studies has it much easier than some poor kid with one parent with unstable job and medical bills?
http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate
That said, that very real situation is why my wife and I took care to find each other, prioritizing a family and educational history alongside other "desires", why we work hard to provide a loving, stable, and nurturing environment, and why we're putting aside money in 529s for our kids.
I don't know what the outcome will be, but we are making our own investments and current sacrifices to help our kids achieve whatever seems best for them. That not every child worldwide has that same beginning is perhaps unfair, but it won't cause me to do less for my family in the interest of fairness.