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> A few months ago, a startup developer friend said to me "I don't understand why poor kids, ghetto kids, don't do startups to get out of poverty." I've got ju

• calinet6 14y ago
  Correction: zero tolerance for a system they've spent their entire lives within that never taught them the right way to think about their position in society.
  • cllns 14y ago
    Maybe. This is a tough point. The 'system' obviously sucks but I don't want to skirt personal responsibility. It's the upper-middle class straight white cisgendered male's fault if he doesn't take the time to learn about his privilege. He has the resources, but chooses to ignore it. (Note: I'm not saying the person from the article necessarily fits this description; I'm speaking more generally)
    • theorique 14y ago
      It's the upper-middle class straight white cisgendered male's fault if he doesn't take the time to learn about his privilege. He has the resources, but chooses to ignore it. What's in it for him?
      • deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      • mdpye 14y ago
        Growth, and positive interaction with the rest of the world?
        • jbooth 14y ago
          Balance that against the positive ego effects of thinking that you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps and built the log cabin you were born in. Parent post was right for a good number of people.
          • lurker14 14y ago
            And the rest of us are well within our rights to not tolerate those people.
        • theorique 14y ago
          Is such growth and positive interaction only possible if a White / Cis / Male submits himself to this particular narrative, or is there room to debate and disagree?
          • mdpye 14y ago
            Absolutely there is space for debate and disagreement - the problem is generally in getting acknowledgement that there are other view points with which to engage. A considered opinion deserves respect if not agreement. One formed on assumption, in a vacuum is more difficult to accept.
    • pnathan 14y ago
      At the extreme risk of starting a flame war, why do you seem to posit that he should do that as a moral obligation? (I'm reading that you posit that, perhaps I misinterpreted) If I read that correctly, under what strictures do you interpret reading about the idea of privilege (noting that this word in and of itself has contested and differing meanings) as a moral obligation?
      • cllns 14y ago
        Very good question. I'm not sure I have a good answer. I haven't though about it in terms of it being a moral obligation. My intuitive, immediate response is that it has something to do with (most?) privilege being an unfair, oppressive institution: one that is self replicating unless it's actively fought. I'm not sure this actually addresses the question you asked though.
        • mpyne 14y ago
          > My intuitive, immediate response is that it has something to do with (most?) privilege being an unfair, oppressive institution: one that is self replicating unless it's actively fought. You should be careful how you consider this though. We wouldn't hack a tall person's legs off at the knee to force them to be equally as tall as the rest of us, nor do we give geniuses lobotomies to try and equal out intelligence within the population. It is no one's moral imperative to punish themselves for being placed in a good situation. If life was inherently fair we'd all still be a soup of completely equal unicellular organisms. Our differences and our circumstances conspire to make it so that not everyone has the exact same shot at success, but that's not the worst possible thing that could happen either. If you want to reduce unfair privilege I would recommend starting by helping those without it, instead of obligating those with it.
          • makomk 14y ago
            That's a very impressive strawman you've got there, given that the comment you replied to didn't argue that people should "punish themselves for being placed in a good situation", let alone that they should be brought down to the level of the rest of the population. All cllns was arguing was that people should be aware of their status in society. Unless, of course, you think that being made aware just how little of what they take for granted is available to others and how unimportant their own skills were is cruel to privileged people? Because if that's the case, fuck you. Seriously.
    • jiggy2011 14y ago
      Interestingly people who are upper middle class and devote time and energy to the cause of the poor are often disparaged for that. Terms like "champagne socialist" or "bleeding heart liberal" are invoked. Perhaps it is seen as patronising to the poor because it makes the implication that the poor need the help of upper middle class white people to help them out of their problems?
      • mpyne 14y ago
        Well, I would argue that during the period where there is a large disparity, that the poor need the help of those most able to provide the help (i.e. those who are already well-off). At the very least they need those they are "competing" against to ease up, otherwise the imbalance ends up locked in. That doesn't mean "upper middle class white" necessarily, but it does disproportionately seem to affect that group (because otherwise we wouldn't be talking so much about gender, class, race, etc. privilege)
      • lurker14 14y ago
        People who use the terms "champagne socialist" or "bleeding heart liberal" as insults are fellow rich people who feel socially threatened by the people they insult.
  • criley 14y ago
    Correction: zero tolerance for parents who raise children and do not teach them the right way to think about their position in society. Not that I necessarily agree with my correction, but I found yours to be a bit... politically myopic.
  • theorique 14y ago
    the right way to think about their position in society. What is "the right way" for a person to think about his position in society? Is there only one correct point of view?
    • freshhawk 14y ago
      Good point, but teaching them that "your position in society" is a thing that should be thought about and has a huge effect on your worldview is step one.
      • theorique 14y ago
        That's true - it's good that people don't take their life situation for granted. What concerns me is when it's presented as a predigested, one size fits all "conclusion" - e.g. "Straight White males are oppressors, females and minorities are oppressed, no exceptions ever".
        • calinet6 14y ago
          Of course not, the important thing is that they understand and respect the complexity of the situation they live in, and understand how to think about it—not what to think about it, but how.
• orangethirty 14y ago
  But they do. Let me explain. I grew up in a barrio, which is a latin ghetto. Junked cars in front lawns, domestic disturbances every night, shootings, drugs, all of that stuff. Every kid in there made money by pure hustle. There were no jobs available for any of us. Some kids cut hair (then went on to become barbers), others worked on cars, but most sold drugs. There were startups, but all were of the illegal variety. No one had any type of business permit, and almost everybody sold illegal substances (including alcohol). Some people did make it out of poverty and went on to live productive lives. Others, the ones that sold drugs, either ended up being junkies, dead, jailed, or just disappeared. This due to the type of business they got into. I'm sure that had these kids gone into real businesses like mowing lawns, painting houses, working at a farm, selling eggs, or anything positive, they would be good productive people. I was lucky. At age 9 I started selling candy. Then I joined Amway at age 14. Then I opened up my first (illegal) auto shop some years after. Why always had the option of selling drugs, but it just wasn't attractive as a business. For every sale I would make about a dollar. If I made 30 sales in a day (given the competition from other dealers), then I would be putting myself at risk for $210 week (you worked 7 days a week). Not worth it. I did not make that much selling candy, but at least I was not getting shot at. And with Amway, made twice as that much by selling soap. Why did I make it out and not others? I was lucky. My parents were professionals, the only ones in the whole barrio. The other kid's parents were not. They also had to incur into dealing drugs, or other illegal activities. The issue is that these people did not do this because they wanted, they did so because they had no other option. Dealing drugs was the only job they could get, much less do. So the kids were grandfathered into selling drugs, too. Can poor kids do startups to get out of poverty? Absolutely. But they need to have the right information to do so. Their parents need to have legal jobs available. But not fast food jobs, but real stuff. Construction workers, electricians, mechanics, etc. Those jobs are gone these days. I'm just lucky to be a software engineer. My best friend? In jail.
  • cllns 14y ago
    Thanks for sharing this. There's a quote I remember from somewhere about this that was something along the lines of "When you give someone two bad options, don't be surprised when they take one."
  • 14y ago
• tlogan 14y ago
  > I don't understand why poor kids, ghetto kids, don't do startups to get out of poverty. Actually, poor kids start more startups that rich kids but access to money and network is very limited. I do think that "Y Combinator for kids-from-poor-families" might be even more successful that Y Combinator.
• angersock 14y ago
  I've got just about zero tolerance left for people who don't view other people as people, instead of embodiments of their socioeconomic-racial-gender status. A person is not their balance sheet, their skin color, or their preferred type of partner. The truth is that--barring sheer crazy--anyone would play the cards dealt to them as well as they can muster. This "Check your privilege" stuff, once a useful exercise in introspection, appears to have become another threadbare excuse for real thought and critique. What a fucking bore.
  • nollidge 14y ago
    False dichotomy. Paying attention to socioeconomic-racial-gender status doesn't mean you're not paying attention to individual variation also.
  • wildgift 14y ago
    70% chance angersock is a white male.
    • angersock 14y ago
      See, the toxicity of this is that, were the facts in support of your obvservation, it would cause many to completely ignore whatever I'd said as "typical white male privileged bullshit." Don't you understand how much damage that type of thinking does, and how it's as bad as the progress we've been trying to make against, for example, dismissing a woman's opinions out of hand because they're a woman's? Don't turn try to turn back the clock on equality, especially in a medium where ideas actually can stand on their own merits (or lack thereof).
      • wildgift 14y ago
        I find that white people complain the most about racial categorizations... but also talk about racial categorizations the most. And who made up the categories, and laws that discriminated based on categories, and who still holds the power to use those categories. It's largely white people. It seems to me like denial, hypocrisy, or both. (I say that as a person of color. Being Asian, I am a relatively privileged color, too, compared to black and brown people. That's just a fact. At the individual level, though, I know plenty of black and brown people who not only have more privilege than I, but grew up with more than I did and have networks that are more powerful than mine.)
• pvaldes 14y ago
  > "I don't understand why poor kids, ghetto kids, don't do startups to get out of poverty." This is mostly a cliché The short answer is: because they have more important troubles about to think. Poverty, lack of opportunities, drugs, drunks or the ocassional abuse of members of your family or even from the police. But the "maybe not so obvious" answer is that in fact young inmigrants are one of the people more focused, and more pressed by family and environment, into the creation of small business in your new country. And a lot are sucessful doing this. America is, probably, one of the countries with more cases of "the small grandpa's store". Now we all live in the supermarketzoic age, so things are very different currently.