This is entirely off–topic for HN, but whatever. America has equality of access, not equality of outcomes. I’ll tell you a similar story. I’ll have to simplify

This is entirely off–topic for HN, but whatever. America has equality of access, not equality of outcomes. I’ll tell you a similar story. I’ll have to simplify and leave out some details, as you’ll see. My ancestors immigrated to America too. They too had nothing but the clothes on their backs. They did have one tiny advantage: America was giving away free land. So when they arrived in the 1700s, they got a homestead. Of course, there was no infrastructure. No running water, no roads, no electricity. They built a cabin and plowed a field and lived in poverty for their entire lives. Their children helped out on the farm from a young age, and occasionally attended school when it was available. They soon got itchy feet and wanted to move away from crowded areas. One of them took his wife and joined an expedition that headed west over the Appalachian Mountains, then sailed down the Cumberland River. Most of the group stopped and founded a little town called Nashville, TN, but my ancestor and a few others thought that the area was far too crowded so they kept going. At the fork of the Red River they turned north and sailed up river. Eventually they found a nice spots and started building cabins. Later the town of Adams, TN was founded there. When they built that cabin their nearest neighbor was building their own cabin 20 miles away. They lived there in poverty for their entire lives. They helped raise the first church, and helped pay a teacher to run a school. They worked constantly to improve life for their children. It was four or five generations before my family achieved what you and I would call stability. Ok, so you didn’t have the advantage of free land, nor the back breaking labor of clearing it and farming it. But you had the advantage that someone else had already built the infrastructure we rely so heavily on. As a result, you yourself achieved what it took my family five generations to do. Like you, I didn’t qualify for financial aid or scholarships. I had nobody to help me pay for car insurance, or to lend me money. Nothing but whatever I could earn for myself. I went to college for one year, failed most of my classes (basically almost everything except Calculus), dropped out, and went into software engineering. Of course I have been annoyed to find myself applying for jobs only to be told that they only hire people with degrees, but it hasn’t ruined my life. > Instead this country focuses on the color of skin and sexual orientation… This is a very new phenomena, and in fact it is really only a very vocal minority who do so. Unfortunately for us normal people, it is a minority who universally went to college and now dominate a particular political party. 80 or 90% of the country have no care for what color your skin is. All they care about is how hard you work. Your boss at whatever job you pick is going to care more about your work ethic than almost anything else. If you start a business of your own, you will care more about your employees’ work ethic than almost anything else :) I recommend that you take the long view. Find a stable job, marry, start a family, raise some children well, and make sure that they do better in life than you. Forget about anything you have seen on TV; that’s the real American Dream. And don't forget that you’ve already helped your siblings have a better life than you. Take some satisfaction from that, and teach your children to find the same satisfaction where they can.