My father also came to this country with nothing and built himself up, but as someone else mentioned, my father was born in a high caste, he got an education to

My father also came to this country with nothing and built himself up, but as someone else mentioned, my father was born in a high caste, he got an education to become an engineer when most people didn't even complete secondary school. There is something to be said about generations of cultural knowledge and success that makes you rise up from "temporary poverty". This is true of most of my family, due to a bad generation of parents they became poor but they used to be pretty wealth a couple generations ago, this is a stark difference in attitude from people who've always been in multi generational poverty, they don't know any succesful people, they don't have any role models, the color of their skin / caste makes them not confident in their abilities to succeed, realistically those people are the ones who need affirmative action. i'm sure your kid is smart enough to succeed in this world even if he went to berkeley instead of stanford.