[Miner49er]

Maybe, another theory I've heard from Chris Hedges is that minorities never believed in the myth of the American Dream.

White americans have been told as kids that if you go to college, and then work hard, you'll be rewarded with a good life. This generation of people are finding this to be a con. Look at the lack of wage increases since the 70s even though productivity has increased a lot or look at the student debt crisis for some proof that it was.

Minorities, on the otherhand, were never taught to believe in the American dream, because they haven't really had it in the past.

Now that white people are figuring out it was a myth, and that they are going to likely end up with a worse life then their parents they are commiting suicide, commiting mass shootings, etc.

Here's the article. There's some stuff in there I'm not so sure about it, but I think the general idea has some merit. https://www.truthdig.com/articles/american-anomie/

[jniedrauer]

This rings true to me. They told me that if I worked hard, then I'd be successful by default. At some point in my early 20s, I realized that it wasn't true at all, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was severely depressed and felt like a failure, right up until the point where I accidentally stumbled into being a programmer and turned out to be good at it.

[unicornfinder]

I know this feeling very well, made considerably worse by the fact that I happened to be friends with some people who for various reasons did end up being very, very successful. It took me a very long time to realise that they were the outliers rather than me being a failure, and I still doubt myself.

[hi5eyes]

theres a tweet thats been blowing up among us kids/post grads

https://twitter.com/yaboyjaeb/status/1142137347456344064

[opportune]

I think a lot of it is also due to minorities becoming better educated and being treated more fairly in the job market (both domestically and due to globalization), there is more competition for jobs now, so you can't just be successful by default because you are an educated white person who shows up on time. And a lot of people are probably seeing their standard of living decrease from childhood->mid adulthood as they are affected by this transition to a work environment where race plays less of a factor. Another factor is that the percentage of people getting bachelor's degrees over time keeps going up, so degrees are also getting more common and are ending up to be a less competitive advantage.

> White americans have been told as kids that if you go to college, and then work hard, you'll be rewarded with a good life.

People should add an addendum that you need to think about what kind of job you are going to get after you graduate, and it's still kind of true. I know people who thought like this, not at all exclusively white people, and those people are at this stage of their lives (early-mid 20s) seemingly a lot less happy than people who actually thought about their potential careers before they turned 22.