You are correct, one of the few ways to escape poverty for whites and blacks in that region is to join the military, but that comes with service to your country including risking your life. You should feel proud that your parents did what it took to escape poverty and you are truly "privileged" to have had the parents you did. Thanks for making my point.
And as know the military has been offering poor blacks and whites opportunities to escape poverty for generations especially those that take advantage of the training in the military and the GI Bill afterwards.
Meanwhile, how did your ancestors arrive in this country? Did they hop on a boat and move to Appalachia? Those land grants were offered to get poor families to move away from coastal Virginia to the mountains to serve as a buffer against Native Americans to their west. Yes, some were rewards for serving in the military, but the real purpose was to create that buffer with Native Americans and get them out of coastal Virginia.
Many were of Scottish or Irish descent and that tells you a lot about how they got here.
I never said people in Appalachia were dumb, I said they don't value education to the degree other people do. 26% of Appalachia's working age population compared to 30.8% of African Americans and 37.7% for the nation at large have secured 4-year college degrees.
Meanwhile, 61% of Jewish families and 57% of Chinese Americans have college degrees. Yet most of them come from families that have resided in this country for less than 100 years and arrived either as forced labor or fleeing religious persecution Germany or eastern Europe with nothing in their pockets.
Not surprisingly, median household income correlates with educational attainment much more closely than skin color. Numerous studies confirm the value an ethnicity puts on education correlates directly with their success in America. Every race in America has an ethnicity that has excelled due its unique culture and value it puts on education. Among Hispanics, Cubans do exceptionally well, among blacks, Nigerian immigrants do well.
https://africans-in-america.com/2018/11/12/data-show-nigerians-the-most-educated-in-the-u-s/
This highlights why it is important to dispel the nonsense surrounding "white privilege" because at one level it discourages young black children by causing them to believe they cannot succeed because of their skin color. They can and there are millions of blacks that prove that to be true. Likewise, anyone that believes they are "privileged" is someone, I was not interested in hiring. I ran a company with 42,000 employees and I much preferred hiring someone that had something to prove, then someone that felt entitled.
Regarding your experience with the law, which is dated. One of the last areas where systemic racism flourished was in the sentencing of crimes. Various studies highlighted that gender, skin color and "looks" played a major role in who long a sentence someone received. Biden sponsored legislation in the early 1990s, that contributed to a generation of young black men spending disproportionate time in prison... and that is tragic. Trump addressed many of those inequities in his criminal reform bill designed to eliminate judicial bias. Various legislative bodies have also passed legislation that restricts the ability of judges to exercise the kind of bigotry you witnessed. Finally, the appeals process combined with lawyers who know the sentencing guidelines have accomplished a lot to minimize the ability of judges to exercise personal bigotry. But I don't doubt there are places where an individual judge ruling on minor crimes, who is not subject to oversight can discriminate... be that judge black or white.
I don't think I benefited from being white. In sports, my skin color didn't help me win a scholarship, my talent did. In my career, I was not competing against blacks for the most part. Blacks did not and still don't generally pursue accounting degrees. The few blacks that did were offered amazing jobs and rapid promotions, so in that sense, they were privileged as individuals... at my expense. Women likewise benefitted as firms sought to achieve diversity targets in a world where most accounting graduates were white men. But are you arguing that the fact that women and blacks did not pursue accounting as somehow causing me to be privileged and the few who did, got preference over me based on their gender and race. I see it more like professional sports. Some sports are dominated by a race for reasons unrelated to their skin color per se, but the individual choices they make.
I went on to become the CFO of a physician organization where every other executive was Jewish. Not sure being Christian was a selling point. I used to kid the CEO, that I was hired as a "token", either that, or to make sure someone came to work during the High Holy days.
Where I think I really benefited was growing up in a large family of nine children with two loving parents and a dad that worked his ass off to provide for his children. What a role model! I think about how much more my parents might have enjoyed their lives if they were not always sacrificing for their children.
My dad had a small business, that several times almost went broke due to things beyond his control including changes in government regulations. I got to watch how he hung tough during those times and while we had to tighten the belt on family spending, there was no shortage of love. Most of my dad's employees were southern blacks and my first job was cleaning up their bathroom, later as I got older, I got promoted to work alongside them. My Dad did not let us work in the office until we had college degrees, I worked there only one year during my career and then went off in another direction. I feel privileged that my father started us at the very bottom and taught us every person deserves respect and no job that has to be done is below us.
Those are real privileges and I think those things contributed to my success later in life. My wife is Asian. She started her own business several years ago as our last child was entering high school, and she was less "needed" around the house. She has grown her business so much she has forced me out of retirement. I do think being a woman and a minority works in her favor. We are in the property services business and most of our competition are white contractors. Perhaps their sense of privilege is why so many of my wife's customers prefer her... she rarely loses a bid against a white contractor.
Times are really changing.
Affirmative action has hurt black people in general, even while helping a few. For bright black students who suffered from a poor public education, getting into a college that their high school did a poor job of preparing them for is a real blessing.
But for the average black student who did not suffer from a poor primary education, accepting that child into an elite university means (and studies confirm this), that they have a higher chance of dropping out or graduating at the bottom of their class... neither is a good option.
"Affirmative action-induced low grades are a serious problem—as demonstrated by research over the course of the last decade. For example, in one study of top law schools, more than 50 percent of African American law students (many of whom had been admitted pursuant to affirmative action policies) were in the bottom 10 percent of their class. And the dropout rate among African American students was more than twice that of their white peers (19.3 percent vs. 8.2 percent)." Interestingly, the dropout rate for affirmative action admissions is about the same as for a "legacy" admission. This argues that you really don't "help" children by putting them in a pool they are not prepared to compete with regardless of reason... skin color or privilege.
Rather than affirmative action, I support insuring all children have access to good primary education. My brother runs a charter school in Jersey City were 75% of the students attending come from families earning below the poverty line and 100% graduate high school and 96% were accepted into college. These black students deserve financial aid to go to college and not affirmative action acceptance. They "earned" the opportunity... but even in their cases, they should be accepted into schools where align with their abilities and talents whatever they are.
As an aside, I turned down two Ivy league schools and went to several good state universities. I got a great education. My opinion is that where you go to school matters less than how much effort you put in when you get there. I lived both ends of that... my first two years, while I was in sports, I barely maintained my eligibility. Then after being injured, I worked my way through the rest of my school and got 3.93 GPA the last two years. I was privileged to have worked at McDonald's and a state mental health facility way from the family business. I learned whether bathing patients, changing soiled linens, or flipping burgers, if you work hard, people notice. Later in my career when I was an executive, I did "noticed" those employees, who put in the "extra" mile whether those employees were black or white, gay or straight, male or female... it did not matter... I was interested in their work product and nothing else.
And that is the real privilege. It is easy to think that somehow skin color or ethnicity, or gender, or sexual identity is holding you back... and some instances it might be in a specific situation... but the world is a big place, and we have two legs... and there are plenty of people and employers looking for someone who is special... and don't give a rat's ass, about their skin color. In the late 80s, one of my peers was Ron Willaims. When you met Ron, you knew he was headed to the top... he was a highly intelligent man who happened to be black. He ended up CEO of CIGNA Healthcare.
Why do I argue "racism", because I know that as soon as someone thinks of themselves as a victim, they are. It is over. They won't succeed. And they were beaten down, not by "white" privilege, but someone's "pen". Why bother to try, when you can't succeed? Racism is not a white person's disease, every race is has racists within it. And so, I am calling you on to stand down and to realize painting one race as racist does nothing to help anyone... acknowledging that racists exist among all races, but that most people are not racists, provides a far more accurate picture of reality and hope.
America's past is not its presence or future... your core argument is that America's past condemns it forever, if that were true, then why bother? If it is not true, then why say it is true? You say you want to fix things, without acknowledging how much effort has already gone into fixing things... again, it seems perverse logic.
