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Comment by rey | Hacker News Reader

I love how you articulate the privileges you've had in your life, which buoyed your career. It's a rare exercise and one that I encourage people to do. All too often, we take for granted these "invisible stepping-stones" that brought us to where we are now (I recently wrote about these invisible privileges for the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rey-faustino/the-empathy-gap_b...).

I also was an immigrant to the US, and it sounds like we have a similar immigration story. I wonder what it would be like to be born in a low-income community in the US where social mobility is difficult. Do you think you would be where you are now if you grew up in that kind of environment?

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>I wonder what it would be like to be born in a low-income community in the US where social mobility is difficult.

I fit that description.

In short, my personal, anecdotal experience says immigrants often place a greater value on education, recognize more viable options for success, are more supportive of each other and have less fear of stepping out of their comfort zone.

I saw no shortage of people hamstrung by each of those things growing up, particularly the de-valuing of education.

Yes, immigrant communities historically have been known to be more collaborative and to have more upward social mobility because of that.

When I worked in East Palo Alto, which is a low-income community in the heart of Silicon Valley, I sometimes felt like it was like living and working in a bucket full of lobsters. Instead of being helped up out of the bucket, we'd get clawed down.

But slowly and surely, the work of community leaders, nonprofits and community organizers are changing this landscape and building up a new generation of kids who think differently.

The main reason is: 'Immigrants' do not have 'welfare' support. Mostly are 'undocumented'.

Yes.. we can get at ER and school. but no stamps, disability or unemployment checks.

So we have to help each other and never rely on gov...

That's a great read too. Is the paraphrasing of Peggy McIntosh intentional? Her "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" (http://ted.coe.wayne.edu/ele3600/mcintosh.html) is a classic in sociology and race studies literature, for anyone interested.

Entirely intentional. When someone related the concept to me, I realized I was carrying around a knapsack of my own, filled with things unusual for a hispanic person of my background.

That was probably the proximate quote, but interestingly this has been a fairly common metaphor. Catullus is the oldest use I'm aware of, but I have no doubt it is older.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catullus_22

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