Here's the thing about race and achievement in the US: My parents were poor during the Great Depression which is significantly different than poor today because there were zero social safety net programs that could have helped their families. Each had a parent who had a serious, debilitating and chronic illness which killed them at a young age, leaving my parents each to grow up in a single parent home. The highest educational attainment of my grandparents was completion of the 8th grade, although my grandfather helped all of his younger siblings obtain college educations. At the same time, he tried to convince my father to drop out of high school at age 16 because he needed the help on the farm. My father finished high school to spite his father. Dad was quite bright and under different circumstances, I think he would have become an engineer or an architect. I think he would have been happier as an architect but probably the machismo of engineering would have won out.
My father started out at the company he worked for until retirement at age 18 or 19, as a warehouse worker. He worked his way up, steadily, and eventually managed a bunch of accounts and trained VPs to do their job, which he was not qualified to do because he lacked a college degree. He did some product development and held a patent (or his company did for his new product). My parents managed to have my mother stay home to raise the family, after the first few years, and like now, daycare was difficult to find so: it was stay at home. Which was difficult because my mother knew she should be grateful--her own mother scrubbed hospital floors to support her ailing husband and 4 kids, so it was a luxury to stay at home. But Mom wasn't really suited for the work. Still, my parents eventualy managed to purchase a very modest ranch home in the early 60's. My parents instilled in all of us kids the same notion of excelling in school the way stereotypical Asian parents do, minus the money for lessons or cram schools, etc. I did not realize until well into adulthood that my parents were obnoxious in how much they bragged about us kids because we never heard an actual word of praise or pride. It was more like coming home with a 97% and being asked to account for the missing 3 percent. I remember once getting an A- in elementary school and being afraid to go home with my report card. But they had good reason: My dad's company sponsored scholarships for the high achieving offspring of employees. That was the only way we would be able to go to college. And there was no question of whether or not we would go.
My dad was fairly bigoted ( I loved him and he's been dead for more than 20 years and so I'm soft peddling things here) and he used to feel it was unfair that black people had all sorts of advantages he never had (which was hard to imagine which advantages those were. My mother's stepfather, we came to learn long after he died, was a member of the KKK, so that was alive and active when/where he grew up. And where i did. My parents shielded us from a lot but I heard rumors that were apparently true that a couple of times black families attempted to move into our town or at least the school district and had crosses burnt in front of their homes). I guess he meant Affirmative Action; and being allowed to attend the same underfunded schools that we attended, until they bought their house in an all white town. I used to look at him and think: I'm so proud and impressed with all that you achieved but imagine trying to do that while black. It would not have been possible. It simply would not have been. Dad felt his company was progressive because they hired an occasional black woman to work as a secretary. I tried to talk with him about how much harder it would have been (ie impossible) had he been black but he was convinced no one had it harder than he did growing up. And friends, things were really tough for him and for my mother. I remember well when both sets of grandparents got indoor plumbing. My dad's stepmother cooked on a coal stove that heated half of the house and another one heated the other half. My dad and uncle slept in an unheated attic space. Christmas was an orange and some nuts in the bottom of a sock. They ate from the garden and hunted and fished and foraged in the woods. Milk from the cows and later, some meat from pigs as my grandfather could not keep up with the milking after Dad left home. Eggs from the chickens, and extra eggs and extra produce sold from the kitchen. Grandpa gave me 4 silver dollars for high school graduation. I am still ashamed that my father somehow felt he had to explain that was all my grandfather had to give me. I knew. We never talked about money but I knew. I hate to think what my grandfather had to give up to give me those four silver coins.
So for my parents to be able to purchase a home not on a farmstead and to send their kids to college (on scholarships and we were responsible for the rest of the funding) was truly a miracle of hard work, determination and big dreams for their kids.
And if we had been black, none of that would have been possible.
It's easy to think with my nice education and my nicely educated spouse and kids and nice life and plenty of friends of various backgrounds that racism no longer exists or is no longer significant. Very easy to do if you don't actually look around or listen to what people say. I'm ashamed that for a good long while, I allowed myself to forget about racism because the small town we live in was so completely white (except for a handful of faculty, mostly foreign born) that I could literally go months and never see anyone with coloring darker than my own. I mean, I knew it existed but I personally had to deal very little with it, even the inconvenience of witnessing someone being treated poorly or more likely hearing about it.
It's so easy to discount what you don't have to deal with yourself or what does not affect you or your family. So easy to take for granted.
White people struggling to tread water, never mind, progressing is not the same thing as trying to keep your head above water while black. Because when you work so hard just to survive and to provide a better life for your family, it can be hard to imagine anyone working harder than you do.
