If that's true its not due to skin color, its due to the fact that white's are more likely to be raised in a house where people don't speak like ghetto slugs and learn to hate police and so forth. "Success" rests in large part in how you present yourself to others and how others see you.
I'll never forget when I was on a bus, and I heard a little black kid talking just like a thug with a thug style of speech. He was just a real little bitty kid, and I knew that had to come from his parents. That poor kid is already on the track to failure and its not even his fault.
Now some of you may think that's racist, but in fact its the cold hard truth.
I'm a little bit of a racist, too.
A couple of years ago I hired a young lad (he was 19 at the time). I hired him because he has two remarkable talents. First, he can run complex mathematical modelling pretty much in his head (to a level that I'd have to write code to achieve), second he can draw real-world conclusions from said models with astonishing consistency. In short, he's a one man client acquisition and retention machine. He's now doing very well for my company and truth be told, he's probably going to leave me within a few years and start up on his own. He's brilliant, and successful, and he's black.
The little bit racist part?
Well, after I hired him, I wouldn't let him near a client for about 9 months. I barely let him in the office. During that time, he was doing some work for me (presented to clients by other staff, or, indeed, me), and the rest of the time, I put him through elocution lessons and made him get his English Literature GCSE (basic qualification taken at 16 here, not sure what the US equivalent is) and a Foundation course in European History. Because he is black? Well, yes, in a way.
He never came for an interview. The only reason I even met him was because a mutual friend of ours (a Hip Hop DJ) begged me to meet this kid and, I quote; "Get him out of the Game".
This kid is from Brixton, and spoke like a Dizzee Rascal (YouTube the chap to see what I mean) rap song. All the time. He'd been laughed out of every job interview he'd had, and had aggressively laughed himself out of every qualification he could have achieved. When I met him, he said he was working on music, which I'm pretty sure was a euphemism for road life (otherwise our friend would not have reached out).
Now, I'm working class, and have done rather well for myself. White working class from the Midlands of England. Foul-mouthed and decidedly uncultured at times, but it didn't get in my way. He's working class, black working class, and it got in his way at every stage of his life.
He's not the only black person who works for me, not by a long shot, we're a gloriously mixed bag. Nor is he a charity case, getting his level of talent on board was an entirely selfish act on my part.
I still get a huge amount of grief from my West London peers about making him take the lessons, because I 'erased part of his cultural identity'. Well, I tend to say, I paid for it, he chose to do the erasing. And, moreover, it was the culture that was holding him back.
So, says I, if we move this thread forward, it's not race we should discuss, but culture.
