Roger Federer Fans a Treat for you – his unknown facts
Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley
211–220 of 322 posts
Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Socially awkward" seems to be a loaded term in your use case. If you are "socially shy", then yes reading would help. But in the case you're not socially awkward in your natural environment (ie you just lived in a different culture), the nuisances are impossible to learn unless you encountered it. Just think of it as a different culture, no East Asian will come to the US without fucking up something small or big a f…
impossible to learn unless you encountered it Why? How can there be such a thing? What is there that prevents someone from recording what they encountered and learned, and passing that knowledge on to others?
I don't think the nuance can be conveyed effectively for many reasons (you don't even know something is nuance when you're used to it). But regardless, remember all the jokes about how someone meets their SO's parents for the first time, preparing to not mess anything up, being told everything that needed to be avoid, and end up doing it all wrong? It's similar to that. You actually need practice.
Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not ok to look at someone's gender, age & race and make assumptions about there life, full stop. Applying a term like 'privileged' to an entire group of people based on a single characteristic is stereotyping at it's worst. This isn't to say that trends don't exist, but it is not ok to assume something about an individual simply because it's true, as a general rule for the group they belong to. Like it or not,…
But that's really the whole point of privilege - belonging to the group is enough to grant you the advantages of it. Period. It doesn't mean your life is great, it doesn't mean you don't have problems, but the members of a privileged class absolutely possess those privileges - that's how it works.
Did you not read all the comments here from people from poor, rural families for whom the post resonated? Many, if not most of them are likely white (some even explicitly stated it).
What exact privilege does growing up desperately poor in rural West Virginia bring you? A person from a middle class black family in NYC would have much more opportunity.
Yes, each person would face their own set of challenges (ie, the black person vis-a-vis the police, although believe me that unjustified police brutality happens to white people too). But it's wrong to judge one as being "privileged" based solely on their skin color, without knowing anything about them.
Sadly, I noticed that most of the people shouting "privilege" at others themselves come from very privileged backgrounds, and have learned this attitude at some expensive private liberal arts college. I'm not sure what is driving their crusades (guilt?), but again, I was raised that it's not right to judge people based solely on their skin color, regardless of the rational behind it. And fail as I may sometimes, I will continue to strive toward that goal.
Finally, what about those of us coming from a mixed-race background, with a grandparent or great-grandparent from a "non-privileged" group? If you look hard at some of us, you can see evidence of that group. Are we partially privileged? Or is being privileged a discrete state?
Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get it, but I don't buy it. Rather, I don't buy that it's so cut and dried as to be accepted with "period". When you're part of the largest demographic, you're basically invisible: Generic 30s Middle Class White Guy #87473674282. The term just isn't nuanced enough.
> you're basically invisible. That's the point - being invisible is a privileged state . Black people are not invisible the US, where some people (not all) will inevitably treat them with suspicion (or worse).
> That's the point - being invisible is a privileged state.
So compared to a rich, white expat in some African or Asian country, the typical resident of said country is privileged? Because in that country, compared to the expat, the resident is essentially invisible, and the white expat is decidedly not invisible.
And many people will treat the expat with suspicion, or worse. Are all of those people "privileged", and the expat "not privileged"?
Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley
#215I had a similar experience starting life with opportunity debt. Single parent family whose mother had no high school education. Have ADD and dyslexia, moved around a lot with a good part my life in subsidized housing, and never graduated from high school. No one teaches you the basics, so that when you do start coming into your own and taking control of your own life you are so incredibly behind your peers socially,…
I feel like the majority of people make the mistake of reflecting on themselves and saying "if only I had this", or "if only I wasn't disadvantaged in this way"... In reality, everyone is disadvantaged in some way, and I can guarantee you that the successful people had a lot of disadvantages and setbacks. You shouldn't dwindle on what you don't have, but rather on what you do have. Successful people don't wait for th…
Are you seriously saying that everyone's disadvantages are the same? Wow.
Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley
#216"I'm a self made millionaire [0]" [0] - Apart from the safe suburban upper class childhood, the prep school and Harvard education my parents paid for, the job at Goldman Sachs my uncle got me straight out of school, and the finance network from that experience that eventually helped me with my first funding rounds, but yea, besides all that I'm TOTALLY SELF MADE!
"I pulled myself up by my bootstraps [0]"
[0] at Phillips Exeter
Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
My parents started out very poor and climbed into the middle class by the time I got to high school. The extended family is still poor, so I'm still exposed to how they think about money. I think the mindsets can break down into three levels, but not cleanly. Poor: You may have to make decisions about which bills to pay or which needs to meet, and being able to pay all your bills and eat is considered a moral virtue.…
I am planning a transition from middle class to capital class, which will take 10-20 years and require investing in real estate. Real estate is a great investment (at least in Australia) because it allows you to get access to larger amounts of credit to purchase assets which will generally go up in value over time because of the policies of central banks to target inflation. In addition buying in the right location w…
I've heard that being too keen on real estate is a common pitfall for middle class investors. Between that and personal bias, I'm avoiding it (at least directly).
My portfolio is primarily stocks, which I find surprisingly easy to work with. You just pick well-run companies in fields you understand, ignore financial news, and wait. I should be capable of living off interest in four years.
Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley
#218This sounds very familiar. When I was in University I didn't understand why some people didn't care about grades and partied so much. When we left school and got into the real world I understood why: they had rich parents with contacts that could get them good jobs or seed capital for their own businesses. I had lots of ideas and worked in a lot of startups for more than 10 years but now the following phrase from the…
Maybe this is because the OP was of an Asian background where taking care for extended family is taken for granted. In reality, most poor families are quite atomized, even when they live under the same roof, so that shouldn't be a big deal.
Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley
#219One thing striking me was how as s child the author had the "common" responsibility of dealing with landlords bills etc for the family.
It may not be something a startup can solve but "administrivia as a service" - some means of connecting families who need with someone able to actually advise and not be taken advantage of
In the uk we have a volunteer service called citizens advice bureau - I am thinking something like this on tap might be beneficial in ways hard to quantify
?
Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like the majority of people make the mistake of reflecting on themselves and saying "if only I had this", or "if only I wasn't disadvantaged in this way"... In reality, everyone is disadvantaged in some way, and I can guarantee you that the successful people had a lot of disadvantages and setbacks. You shouldn't dwindle on what you don't have, but rather on what you do have. Successful people don't wait for th…
Are you seriously saying that everyone's disadvantages are the same? Wow.
Easily. If someone comes from a rich family it's in a way harder for him to build a startup: he will not belong to the demographic of 90%+ potential users of any startup, and it will be hard for him to understand what they want and how to pitch it to them, same thing about employees - it will be hard to lead and motivate people not understanding what the people who need to work to pay their bills feel. This is my personal experience, while i am not rich in the 'first world' sense, when i lived in a small provincial town in Russia 9 years ago i was rich in a relative sense - if you define rich as '1%'. My attempt to build a catering business failed miserably because of these items. Programming - where my clients are of same demographic as myself - works way better.