I think this paints an inaccurate picture. I have many West Indian family friends who also grew up in Brooklyn during this period. Education was emphasized in t

I think this paints an inaccurate picture. I have many West Indian family friends who also grew up in Brooklyn during this period. Education was emphasized in those households. Finding success or not was largely a factor of who successfully avoided contact with the NYPD. Note that I don't say, "Avoided crime." It was simple contact with law enforcement that made the difference; people did fine on their own, but finding oneself in the crosshairs of an apparatchik often lead to derailment. So it goes through the American ages: an ancestor was forced to abandon a successful contracting business in South Carolina under threat from white supremacists. Family farms that couldn't receive Farm Bureau financing languished. Developers with visions of gentrification bought family brownstones for pennies on the dollar as Silent elders faced end-of-life costs and Boomers reeled from the Dotcom Bust. Both of my parents struggle under student debt loads from the 80s. It is likely that my grandfather was only able to access GI Bill benefits because he was nominally able to pass as white. One starts to wonder if systems and institutions are designed to exploit users who aren't made aware of particular loopholes; and yet, to not avail oneself of those "resources" is to be kneecapped by lack of access to advantages other Americans take for granted. It was once said that the purpose of racism is to distract. We agree that focus is necessary, but to say that "culture" and "drive" are the sole inputs in regards to the maintenance of that focus is to be incredibly naive. An immigrant family is partially forgiven for not having the requisite cultural memory of US history needed to understand this, at least.