This is a surprisingly tone-deaf comment as someone from the same background, and its not even internally consistent. On one hand you seem to understand that e

This is a surprisingly tone-deaf comment as someone from the same background, and its not even internally consistent. On one hand you seem to understand that education helped our parents: > but they were able to concentrate on education and were middle class On the other you seem to think that menial labor will somehow fix these places, you think we just haven't tried more police (for every sound bite you hear about defunding the police, go look at the YoY expenditure that city actually has) You also flip-flop on being able to understand that safety is a pretty big part of being able to focus on education for some reason. - I mean can tell you right now, our parents are not representative of their surroundings. Yes there are a lot of stories like theirs, but your home country is anything like mine, the stories are almost bi-modal: either a given person from "home" is the hardest working person you've ever met and pulled themselves up by the thread of their bootstraps (tends to be our direct family or family friends so we hear about this more)... or they're borderline dysfunctional, often struggle with addiction as a form of escapism, and probably not trying to better themselves just like the people you're thumbing your nose at (tends to be something you see a lot more if you go home yourself). Maybe instead of taking the good fortune that we've had with what our parents sacrifices and struggles started us off with and stomping on it with self-aggrandizing diatribes where you proclaim the simple fixes that would right everything for these "poor self-pitying victims"... maybe just take away the lesson that things can improve for them. Focus on the more positive aspects of that exposure, rather than confusing exposure with experience. Because if you're anything like me, we sure as hell don't have any experience near what these people struggle with, both in the US and in our home countries.