I'm a straight white male, and I was born into such a family. Single mother, little sister to take care of while my mom was out working two jobs, and we were below the poverty line. We lived in a very small two bedroom apartment in a bad part of town, and my mother didn't even have a bedroom (she slept on the couch for years). I never dropped out of high school, though I did seriously consider it partway through sophomore year.
> And even if you had managed to learn how to program, you didn't know anybody else who coded or could give you interview advice. So you took a bad coding job that provided no personal fulfillment and didn't help you learn how to code properly so you left to find a better career....
This also nearly describes my younger self, except that 1) I did manage to learn to code properly, well before I ever got paid to do it; and 2) I kept my career, but left to find a better job.
I learned to program by reading (already a decade out-of-date at the time) library books and doing the exercises with pencil and paper. I had a friend who had an ancient box running MS-DOS 5 and Windows 3.1, and he let me type in my Basic programs on weekends. He even gave me a floppy to keep them on! When I finally got a computer, it was a 6 year-old box that someone at church gave my mom one day in late 2003 when I was 14 (I had been writing programs for over 4 years already by that time). I still have it, too... 350 MHz Pentium II; it had 32 MB of RAM when I got it, but it's been upgraded to 192 MB since. It ran Windows 95 at the time, but nowadays it happily runs OpenBSD, and I still use it occasionally, albeit via an old amber-phosphor DEC VT 520 (beautiful terminal, to say the least) rather than the old color CRT it came with, which broke during a move a few years ago :(
I'm also fortunate that my mom was always supportive and encouraging of my computing endeavors.
Anyway. My point is that straight white males can come from destitute families, too. Nearly everyone I've met has assumed otherwise -- that I've somehow grown up privileged and don't understand what need feels like. It's only been the last couple years that I'm finally in a financial position where I don't constantly feel sick to my stomach -- literally sick -- knowing that if something -- anything -- unplanned were to happen, I'd wind up homeless and hungry.
I worked two jobs while going to university on top of some loans I'd taken out, and there were still a few times, especially during the summer sessions (because there is no loan disbursement prior to the summer sessions), where I had less than $13 to my name and I was trying to figure out how to make it last for just two more weeks until pay day. Rachael Ray thinks she's so enlightened with her show, "$40 a Day". Try 90¢ a day.
I did manage to get a few grants and a tiny academic scholarship, but if you think they give white males good grants, you're mistaken. Halfway through high school, we moved from Florida to North Carolina, where cost of living is much lower and my mom was able to get a better job, but we were still right on the poverty line by the time I was applying to university. You'd think that being so poor, FAFSA would've given more aid, but nope. I still wound up with close to $30,000 of debt when I graduated.
It's not that my family is bad with money. My mom is probably the best person I know when it comes to managing finances. She always taught my sister and I to live within our means, but sometimes our means just weren't enough. The amount of stress it can put on a person is staggering. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I'm married now, and a home owner, and things are going pretty well as of late. I want to do everything in my power to make sure my wife (and possibly kid(s) in the future) never have to experience the kind of indigence I've had to endure.
My story isn't typical, though. I got lucky. Not everyone who starts off in my position is able to make such a comeback, and there are so many people who have helped me and my family over the years. I feel like I owe them so much, but when I bring it up, they tell me that, for them, it was such a little thing and I shouldn't worry about it. Regardless, I will always be grateful to them.
I've heard people say before that "only white people can be racist", or that "only men can be sexist", etc. There seems to be this attitude (in the US, at least) that it's not discrimination when it only excludes whites and/or men. None of those things is true. Non-whites can be racist, and women can be sexist, and discrimination against white men is still discrimination.
tl;dr:
* White families can be destitute, too. Inversely, don't assume that because someone is not white that they come from a poor family.
* Discrimination against whites and/or males is still discrimination.
* Life's a bitch, but good people exist (and I owe some of those good people for where I am today).