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You sometimes hear racists say,"Well, if Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan both rose from humble backgrounds to become multimillionaires, then racism can't be an obstacle to people getting out of the ghetto."
It's using the exceptional case to formulate a rule.
Some immigrants come over with nothing, work 18 hours a day in a convenience store or restaurant, send all their children to college, and retire comfortably.
Others, like an immigrant family of my acquaintance, work 18 hours a day in a restaurant but are held back by their daughter who is mentally ill and needs frequent hospitalization and medication (no insurance), and their son, neglected because all his parents' attention is going to the restaurant and to the needs of his sister, gets involved in a gang, is arrested on drug charges, and faces deportation to a country he barely remembers, so the family also needs to shell out for legal expenses. What kind of a retirement is this couple going to have?
What about the street kids that I worked with for four years? Some were so emotionally disturbed from years of abuse and neglect (and some of them came from wealthy two-parent families--it wasn't just the stereotypical "welfare mother" who produced street kids) that it's doubtful that they'll ever be successfully integrated into society. A few remarkable kids did manage to triumph over their backgrounds, but they were few and remarkable. I've seen them described as "super-resilient," members of the single-digit percentage of any population that is going to do well no matter what life throws at them. They had an inner strength that radiated out of them, and I often wished that we could bottle whatever they had and feed it to the other kids.
But we shouldn't hold the super-resilient up as means of bashing less successful people any more than we should bash weekend runners for not winning the Boston Marathon.
Then there's the factor of luck.
My brother had a high school classmate who made his first million at age 28 because he got into real estate and just happened to negotiate a deal for the site of a major shopping center. Did he work harder than the people who spend their lifetimes selling ordinary houses? No, he literally lucked out.
Or think of show business. How many extremely talented actors and musicians spend their entire careers in regional obscurity, waiting tables to survive, simply because they're never able to capture the attention of anyone who could take their career to the next level? As one who follows the arts closely, I know that this happens all the time. I saw Meryl Streep in student productions at the Yale School of Drama, and I was happy for her when she became successful, but she had many equally talented classmates who have never been heard from again.
I once interviewed a best-selling mystery writer as part of my volunteer work for a Portland radio station. I asked why his book had broken out onto the bestseller list when so many mystery titles written by equally fine writers go straight to the remainder table. His answer was that he didn't really know, but he supposed that it got good word of mouth. I read his books and like them, but some of the finest mysteries never make it to the bestseller list.
If hard work were the only factor in financial success, then the people in the metal-plating plant where I worked as a temp in the 1980s would have been living on easy street. The production and QC workers (I temped in the QC department) worked 7:00AM to 5:00PM six days a week with 30 minutes for lunch and two 15-minute coffee breaks. Some of them, especially the single mothers, slept instead of eating during their lunch period. The suits (and fancy suits they were!) came in at 8:30 and left at 4:30, sometimes taking long lunches in the middle of the day. Who worked harder?
When I was living on the East Coast in the 1970s, I read an article about black uemployment in New Haven, Connecticut. It asked the question why, when major manufacturers closed, did the white workers bounce more easily than the black and Puerto Rican workers did.
The writer investigated some cases and found that the white ethnics had mostly been in the city for two or three generations and were well integrated into the business community. When white workers lost their jobs, they had relatives and neighbors within other businesses who could "put in a word" for them.
The blacks and Puerto Ricans, as more recent arrivals, not only didn't have these connections but also faced unofficial racial barriers.
Well, why didn't the blacks and Puerto Ricans just start businesses? the right wingers ask. Ah, but as one who is now self-employed myself, I can tell you that not everybody has what it takes to start a business. You have to overcome self-doubt, you have to have a financial cushion or access to credit, you have to have a product or skill that other people want to pay for, and you have to be able to work without someone else telling you to.
I've now been self-employed for slightly over ten years, and it was a terrible struggle in the beginning, so much so that I almost gave up. What saved me was getting hooked up with an international network of translators who began sending referrals after they got to know me. We all rely on getting "overflow" work from other translators and being chosen when they are assigned to form translation teams.
I have a long-term unemployed friend who entertains the idea of starting a business but has no idea what she could do and besides, has no money for start-up costs, having spent all her savings since becoming unemployed in 2001.
I could go on and on, but success is not simple. Yes, you need skills and determination, and you do need to work hard, but that's not enough. Your skills need to be in an area that someone else is willing to pay for, you need to avoid unforeseen mishaps as you work hard, and you need to be in the right place at the right time and know the right people.
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