Comment by jollybean | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jollybean | Hacker News Reader

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"t's not hugely difficult to earn six figures in the US if you're committed, work hard, and pick a good field."

I think that's true for White and Asian folks.

But the thing about America is that it has two, giant categories of people in a 'different lane' - notably those in poor Black urban neighbourhoods, and new Latino migrants particularly in Texas/Cali where they are highly segregated from the rest of society.

'Technically' you might argue they have that opportunity, but it's not really the case if they live in a situation wherein that reality has never dawned upon them, and their entire life context is skewed towards something else.

My distant cousin married a Latino man, their daughter was 17 and was making 'big money' helping her mother at the cleaning service. And by 'big money' I mean 'some money' for a kind of poor family, a 17 year old with any cash at all was living large. She had absolutely zero concept or aspiration of going to college, nobody she knew did that and was really keen on working, because it made her money and wasn't even keen on finishing high school.

The 'cultural gaps' between these communities are gigantic, it's like being in a different country.

America probably is 'technically the most open' but pragmatically, it's not the case.

I would argue that the people in those ecosystems have much of the opportunity afforded to me, they just don't know about how possible it really is.

I personally work at a Floridian company, and have a bunch of coworkers who come from the exact backgrounds you talk about. It's totally possible, it just has to be a known opportunity, not a pie-in-the-sky dream.

Yes, it's definitely possible. But your personal experience more or less indicates that it can be done, not that it commonly is.

"it just has to be a known opportunity" - and this is the rub.

I think that this is far, far more than simply 'informing them they can go to college'. It's an entire life outlook, set of conscientious behaviours, that's almost impossible to contemplate if you're completely outside of positive conditions.

It is true that almost anyone can go to almost any public school, get into a hald-decent Uni and study STEM, and 'have a decent job'. But getting people into that modality is much more easier said than done, it's probably the 'hard part' actually.

Again, I did not go to college. That's not a necessary step for working in tech.

Again, your personal anecdote is not important, because it's not representative of the normal story in the US. Your story is exceptional.

The number of people who 'don't go to college and end up in in highly paid tech jobs' in the US is very, very small.

> I think that's true for White and Asian folks.

Race-based generalizations almost always end up leading you in the wrong direction. There's substantially more white people living below the poverty line compared to any other group [1] and those poor white communities are trapped by the same lack of awareness of opportunities as any of the minority groups you mentioned. Whites and Asians are over-represented in the affluent groups, which leads many people to look at things through a racial lens, but on a per capita basis, whites dominate the impoverished population.

[1] https://talkpoverty.org/basics/

Your link clearly shows that poverty is significantly worse along black people than white (19% to 8.5%), and worse among American Indians than black people (25% to 19%). I don't understand why you would ever look at this in per Capita terms when clearly there are more white people overall.

If the goal is to minimize and dispel the effects of systemic issues, then you have to use the overall number.

The goal is to use numbers to inform yourself instead of emotional attachments to political narratives. The numbers show that anyone can be poor and deprived of opportunity.

Then go back and read what I replied to instead of what you wanted to think I was saying. The original poster stated "white and asian people don't have this problem" but the numbers show this clearly is not true.

hmm, I did, a few times. I don't see that quote in the parent. They do say that white and Asian people have more opportunity which these numbers clearly confirm.

>> "it's not hugely difficult to earn six figures in the US if you're committed, work hard, and pick a good field." > I think that's true for White and Asian folks.

So the 15 million impoverished white people are just lazy but the 8 million impoverished black people are systematically deprived of opportunity? It's so strange to me that SJWs feel the need to minimize the struggles of groups that are facing the same obstacles as the groups they are advocating for just because they have a common skin color with the majority of the affluent group.

Hmm, I don't see anything about white people being lazy in the parent either. I see that you're not interested in debate based on facts but are driven by your ideology. I wish you luck in reading different viewpoints and making your own decisions based on facts rather than what you've been told to believe.

> I see that you're not interested in debate based on facts but are driven by your ideology

That's an awful lot of projecting. Your use of logical fallacies is dizzying.

>>>I think that's true for White and Asian folks.

I think it's true for people from households that stress STEM, the utility of higher education, and asset management. My mother grew up in North Philadelphia, graduated from an HBCU with a Math degree at age 20, and was making six figures in the early 2000s as a Software Architect/Project Manager, after a brief stint running a small consulting firm. My father grew up in a poor area of Virginia, worked as an engineer (BS Math, MS Space Engineering) and then went to medical school at the age of 35 to became a radiologist. Both grew up during the Civil Rights Movement.

In comparison, my Japanese wife, from a blue-collar family of school teachers, is completely baffled at the idea of entrepreneurship, financial independence, real estate income, etc... She looks at my ~$95k salary and thinks "You make as much as a Japanese school principal, you're at the top." I look at it and think I'm behind the power curve for a 39yo with a STEM Masters degree, and behind the power curve in accumulated assets based on my assessment of long-term freedom, risk mitigation, and how I want to spend my time.

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