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by ellyagg
5348 days ago
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Of course that's not the claim being made by your parent. The argument is about how widespread it is and its effects. I'm pretty sure most people would find his story strong evidence for one side of the argument, assuming they believe it. I'm also pretty sure most people will choose to believe it exactly to the extent it agrees with their predetermined bias. As a white male living in a rural area as a kid and in metropolitan areas as an adult, and having a black best friend, my anecdotal evidence supports a more limited effect than is commonly claimed in pop culture. That is, to the extent that there is willful, systemic, malicious racism, an individual's self-reliance (why this is becoming a dirty word in our culture, I do not know) is significantly more powerful. I respect people who think the system is flawed and want to dedicate their lives to making it more ideal, but otherwise I think it's healthier to believe your success comes from your own decisions. That's not literally true for ANY of us, but it's best to believe it. It's similar to the recent study which showed that children do best when they believe success is more dependent on how hard you work rather than what your IQ is...which is not the same as it actually being true that success is more dependent on how hard you work rather than what your IQ is. |
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...some BS issue that has no value.
My only advice to "black" and other entrepreneurs is shut up, go code and make something awesome.
This entire issue is being exploited to get attention for Angela Benton and her new accelerator.
It's easy to tout self-reliance when you're a white male. It's easy to overlook all the tiny advantages you get that accumulate in an invisible, insidious way. It's easy to see people bringing up the issue as whining.
It's hard to understand what it is to be someone else, what it means to struggle with others' perceptions every waking moment of every day in such a pervasive manner as to be incorporated into your very identity. It's hard. But we should all try.
Sometimes, self-reliance means putting your head down and doing the best work that you can do. Other times, it means finding other people with a common experience and taking collective action to actively change your circumstances. Sometimes it looks like a minority-focused startup accelerator. Sometimes it looks like the Civil Rights Movement.
If it looks like whining, probably the best thing to do is to try to refrain from meta-whining, and deeply consider whether the issue could be a real one, even though your own experience is different.