White Like Me: Privilege

I agree with the chapter that there are more whites who are born into wealthy families, than black people. I am a prime example of that. I was born into a fairly wealthy family. Around here were just average we don't have a ton of money, but we have a good amount. Enough to go on around 3-5 vacations a year. But compared to the rest of the country, we are very wealthy. However, I believe that in this amazing country, that everyone truly has the opportunity to be successful in their life; it just not may come as easy for some as it is for others. That's what makes this country so unique is that you maybe born into the "hood" and be the poorest of the poor, you can still rise above that and be successful in your life and leave that all behind. What you are born into, doesn't determine your fate. However, with that said, life is much harder for those people who live in those poor areas. For me, to be completely honest, I really have not tired that hard in school. I've done what I've needed to do to get decent grades so I could get into a solid college. And I did get into many good colleges. This is mainly due to the fact because I go to a really good public school. But for the kids in the inner city who want to succeed, they need to work three times as hard as I did. I was given an ACT tutor and other academic tutors. The chances are that they don't have access to that. Their schools are very bad too unlike Deerfield. However, (and i don't want people to take this the wrong way because I believe that this is ok) but if a kid in the inner city were to work really hard and get straight A's all throughout high school, a lot of times, he would have a much better chance to get into a good college than me due to the fact that colleges look for kids like that and they would probably not have to pay for college too. I think that that is a very good program and that these kids deserve that because they worked hard, but that also takes away the basis that whites always have the advantage and are more privileged than blacks. Success isn't always making a ton of money and being rich. Success is working hard for what you believe in and succeeding at that and believing that you did the best that you could. Just because a black person isn't as rich as a white person doesn't mean that they are not successful. They do what they can with what they have and if some blacks choose not to succeed then that's their problem. There are plenty of successful blacks in this country. However I know that they have a large disadvantage.