I'm from the hood. what did I do that others can't?

[mcellas]

Serious question..

I'm realizing my dreams, i made it to the final round interviews for the top companies in the nation. I'm not completely there yet, but I feel it happening.

I'm not smart. I don't have a high IQ. I'm from the ghetto, and I grew up poor.

I graduated with no debt in undergrad because i workEd 40 hours a week! And i still had 3.9! I just recently completely very rigorous school program and worked way more than 40 hours a week and i still got a 3.6.

I'm not special, i'm not smart. I did it without the support of the government or social welfare or my parents. Why am i wrong to expect everyone else to have the tenacity and balls to do what I routinely accomplish?

What makes me different? Nothing!


People make the beds they sleep in. I'm sorry. I don't fell sorry for nobody. I'm not an exceptional person and that is obvious. People have no excuse.

I am the same way most nikkas I grew up with try to blame thier suuroundings on why they aint shyt im like nikka i grew up in the apt next to you

 

[YBE]

Im everything you described & I would never ask such a moronic question.

 

[Spatial Paradox]

Could the OP pat himself on the back any harder?

I'm not going to lie, growing up in a relatively crappy neighborhood, I used to think like this in high school sometimes. But as I got older and started thinking hard about why I did relatively well (got my bachelors in June and recently got accepted for the master's program at my school), I realized a few things about myself:

- Though I grew up in a relatively poor single parent household, my home life was pretty stable. And considering none of my siblings ended up falling into the usual pitfalls of living in the hood, I never had any negative influences to deal with at home. I definitely can't say the same for some of the people I knew growing up.

- Not to toot my own horn, but I've always been a brainy, quiet kid. Whether it was teachers in school or various family members, I've always had people praising me for being smart and doing well in school. Can everyone growing up anywhere, much less in the hood, honestly say they were constant praised for being smart? Or were encouraged and pushed to do well in school?

On top of that, I've always been relatively introverted. So while some of my friends ended up following the crowd in high school and flunking out because of it, I gave zero fukks about being with the cool crowd and instead focused on passing classes, getting the hell out of high school and going to college.

And those are just the things that immediately come to mind when I think about why I've done relatively well for myself.


So basically, I was a quiet, smart (and somewhat sheltered) kid who grew up in a relatively calm home and always had people around me fostering and encouraging my braininess. I can only wonder about where I might be if my mother didn't come down on me the few times I fell off in school, or if my teachers and family didn't constantly dote on me and praise me for doing well, or if my home life in general were more chaotic, or if I were more concerned with impressing my peers than with my grades in high school.

The OP's question is actually a pretty compelling question to me. It's just that the context it's framed in is terrible IMO. Instead of it being posed as an honest intellectual inquiry into why some people manage to climb out of poverty while most languish, I most often see it used instead as a reason to simply pat oneself on the back and thumb one's nose up at everyone who didn't make it.

 

[Higher Tech]

Worst poster on this subforum.

By far.

 

[Blackking]

Of course there are serious issues of culture and individual responsibility separating these groups, but nevertheless, unless these immigrants are from highly violent or authoritarian places, this is almost never true. Most immigrants to this country coming from Asia, for example, have no clue that their struggles and obstacles simply don't measure up to those of Black people already living here.

Black people are the primary targets of the police-prison continuum in this country, as the percentages prove. Let's also remember that the US police-prison system is massive. We currently have more people imprisoned than any country in the history of the world- the combined incarcerated populations of the Stalinist Soviet Union at the height of the Gulag period and Maoist China at its peak still can't match up to the number of people imprisoned in the US now, and the largest demographic among those imprisoned are the Black poor. The percentage of incarcerated Americans is only growing, too, meaning that this system is actively growing despite crime rates remaining stable, so it's not as simple as saying that these people are getting themselves caught up in it by their own actions. In at least one sense, the "system" is indeed out to get them.

Furthermore, Black people's quality of life and mortality indicators are often comparable to those of wartorn, sub-Saharan African countries. Check the HIV rate in poor, heavily-Black areas, like the South Bronx, for example... it's worse than most poor countries in Africa who have HIV epidemics. On the whole, Black children face conditions that most immigrants do not, despite coming from the "global South" or "third world."

The truth of Black life is invisible to most people, including most of those who interact with Black people on a regular basis. Personally, I hear fewer Black people shytting on immigrants, than I hear European, Asian and non-Black, Hispanic, and even some privileged African immigrants shytting on American Blacks on a regular basis and asking why they just can't do what the immigrants do. I'm not suggesting we give people a pass for negative, self-defeating, or destructive behavior, of course. The point is that the conditions faced by the Black population are unique and cannot simply be analogized to those of immigrants, especially in a way that makes them seem easier.

Basically.

Dude is patting himself on the back for some weak interview that he might not even receive an offer letter from; when the reality is that some times a few of us have things that help us overcome the odds.

If a black person from the hood makes it they can either make a difference by helping other black people... or fukking up in one of two ways:
Pretending like they are naturally more special than the young blacks who didn't make it...
or
Pretending that every single black person can overcome all odds and be very successful in life regardless of the fact that society isn't set up for large percentages of us to make it.

I've been at large corporations and have weighed offer letters from companies.. I'm from the hood. When I get in that position all I do is 'low key' figure out ways to help or get as many other young blacks in as possible. C@C's kinda like me and don't know how I really am. Some other black guys don't naturally have that or didn't have the chance to go to good universities.

 

[VerbalIntercourse]

Do you suffer from a chemical imbalance or are you feeling yourself because of the job offer(congrats btw)?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Kinda feeling myself right now. It's just amazing that I got so many interviews (8 in total...I just got another invite today). I don't know what I did? I got way more than many of my classmates.

In fact, I heard that the program director has received many complaints from students because they can't find jobs or get any interviews.

the firms were ignoring me until I went to all the events and talked with all the managers and recruiters. Crazy....

My wife is so proud of me. I got a fiew company t-shirts from all the events i'm attending, and She has been sleeping in a particular firm because she so excited that I may work for them.

Having that kind of support is great. I love my wife.

 

[VerbalIntercourse]

Basically.

Dude is patting himself on the back for some weak interview that he might not even receive an offer letter from; when the reality is that some times a few of us have things that help us overcome the odds.

If a black person from the hood makes it they can either make a difference by helping other black people... or fukking up in one of two ways:
Pretending like they are naturally more special than the young blacks who didn't make it...
or
Pretending that every single black person can overcome all odds and be very successful in life regardless of the fact that society isn't set up for large percentages of us to make it.

I've been at large corporations and have weighed offer letters from companies.. I'm from the hood. When I get in that position all I do is 'low key' figure out ways to help or get as many other young blacks in as possible. C@C's kinda like me and don't know how I really am. Some other black guys don't naturally have that or didn't have the chance to go to good universities.

I worked under a boss who had that mindset. She favored black employees and she always tried to hire blacks.

We (non-blacks, and yes Include myself in that group) all saw what she was doing, and we were fukking pissed off everyday. A few employees complained to HR, and it always went no where. No company would ever do anything about that type of discrimination.

I was on SOHH.com being so racist at that time because I was so angry at the discrimination that I faced and that all my fellow employees were facing.

I always had the best performance reviews, and I never was promoted. It was always some black guy/girl who promoted. When she was eventually replaced by this white lady, I got a promotion within in month. and then people on this site say I have identity issues?

 

[TLR Is Mental Poison]

Zeon why didn't you leave the job

If you were as valuable as you claimed you could have "easily" found a promotion by changing companies

That is how I have moved up

Your boss prob didn't promote you because she saw you on SOHH all the time... and you weren't a good worker

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

I guess Gundam isn't going to answer my question about where his life would be now if that white girl he pulled a pistol on would've pressed charges or he got caught doing any of the other criminal activities of his youth.

 

[VerbalIntercourse]

Zeon why didn't you leave the job

If you were as valuable as you claimed you could have "easily" found a promotion by changing companies

That is how I have moved up

Your boss prob didn't promote you because she saw you on SOHH all the time... and you weren't a good worker

I don't go online at work. dude. That's what I always have low post counts.

 

[TLR Is Mental Poison]

I don't go online at work. dude. That's what I always have low post counts.

Well either way, by your own logic where you are in life or a job is wholly a product of your own choices

So by proxy you ALWAYS have the job you "deserve". You had a "racist" boss, but you stayed at the company. Clearly you werent as great as you claimed to be, or they would have promoted you, or you would have found better opportunities.

Why aren't you at that company anymore?

 

[VerbalIntercourse]

I guess Gundam isn't going to answer my question about where his life would be now if that white girl he pulled a pistol on would've pressed charges or he got caught doing any of the other criminal activities of his youth.

I don't know. I didn't get caught.

If I did, I would probably be running around in the D-game with my friends. Most of them stayed on the grind, and they just started opening up businesses now because of the dope money they saved.

I think I would have done the same thing. I probably would have opened up a Asian restaurant or yogurt joint. That's what they did. Yogurt, Crawfish, Noodle house and whatnot.

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

I don't know. I didn't get caught.

If I did, I would probably be running around in the D-game with my friends. Most of them stayed on the grind, and they just started opening up businesses now because of the dope money they saved.

I think I would have done the same thing. I probably would have opened up a Asian restaurant or yogurt joint. That's what they did. Yogurt, Crawfish, Noodle house and whatnot.

 

[Brown_Pride]

Kinda feeling myself right now. It's just amazing that I got so many interviews (8 in total...I just got another invite today). I don't know what I did? I got way more than many of my classmates.

In fact, I heard that the program director has received many complaints from students because they can't find jobs or get any interviews.

the firms were ignoring me until I went to all the events and talked with all the managers and recruiters. Crazy....

My wife is so proud of me. I got a fiew company t-shirts from all the events i'm attending, and She has been sleeping in a particular firm because she so excited that I may work for them.

Having that kind of support is great. I love my wife.

ok gundumb it's getting silly now. (or 3 pages ago)

 

[bouncy]

I agree with the op somewhat, but why do people who say they "made" it, so why can't others, tend to be people who make no more then $80,000?. I would think that a person who thought like this would try to have an income of AT LEAST $150,000, different forms of income like real estate & paper investments, and have their looks in order meaning looking like a model, as you can do this easily in the western world. It seems to me that a lot of these people are narcissistic, and tend to look down on people lower then them, yet if your really look at them they are not the shyt that they think they are. People I've seen who are the shyt in most areas of their life tend to be more humble. Yeah, they think like the Principality of zero, but they also see the bigger picture, and know it isn't that simple because we are living in a capitalist society which means you NEED poor people in order to have rich people. Poor is relative term though, but still poor compared to the rich. Once you get money, you realize this. The system NEEDS the majority of the people to have a consumer mind state, and only a few with an owner mind state, in order to be wealthy.

Just something I noticed.