[radicalbyte]

..and any child with "bad" parents has to work ten times as hard because they've spent their entire life swimming against the current.

There's a reason why certain communities have radically different outcomes. The more motivated kind set their offspring up so that the default outcome is, on average, success. They have to try hard to not succeed.

[djrogers]

> They have to try hard to not succeed.

That is utter crap. They do have to make some bad decisions, but it's not like success is guaranteed for everyone who grows up in a white middle class neighborhood.

[CocaKoala]

Just because it's possible to fail doesn't mean that it isn't easier to succeed. Consider the case of Eric Couch, who stole two cases of beer, drove 70 mp/h (30 miles per hour over the speed limit) and crashed, killing four people. Two hours after the crash, his BAC was .24%. He was 18.

His lawyer argued that he suffered from 'affluenza', and he was sentenced to probation and therapy; note that Eric was a repeat offender (having been previously cited for Minor in Possession and Minor in Consumption of Alcohol.

Eric Couch wasn't sentenced to a jail term until he violated the terms of his probation and fled to Mexico.

Success isn't guaranteed, but does everybody get the same leeway as Eric Couch?

[eli_gottlieb]

>it's not like success is guaranteed for everyone who grows up in a white middle class neighborhood.

You know, if people can grow up in a privileged, middle-class neighborhood, unharmed by want or oppression, work reasonably hard, put in a normal level of effort, make reasonable-in-expectation decisions... and then wind up poor? Something is very wrong.

[eastWestMath]

And being tall doesn't mean you'll be a great basketball player, but it makes it way fucking easier.