"Are Greg and Emily More Employable Than Lakisha And Jamal"
5000 job applications with evenly weighted resumes randomly paired with names more commonly given to white children and names more commonly given to Black children. The "White" applicants were FIFTY PERCENT more likely to get a callback.
Here's an article from the fed discussing a study that shows the average white family has just under 5x more assets than your average Black family, and crucially, that intergenerational wealth doesn't play a big role in that:
There is so much more empirical proof that the US simply is not a meritocracy. You must be deliberately shielding yourself from it or astonishingly naive to think otherwise.
The business I started in the 1980s was mail order and nobody knew my name, color, background, religion, sex, etc.
Today, with the internet, nobody needs to know anything about you for you to run a successful business.
You seem to require that I must be born wealthy. I was born on an Air Force base and spent many years living in base housing. If you're from a military family, you know that ain't wealthy and ain't the path to wealth.
My father grew up in the Depression, and his father apologized profusely to him for asking for a portion of the money my father made collecting scrap so he could buy food. My mother lost everything (and I mean everything) in WW2.
I've posted before about wealthy friends who came to America with a suitcase.
The idea you must be born into wealth in order to be successful in America is simply false. I know too many wealthy people (including Blacks and women) who demonstrate otherwise.
Here's a recipe to move from poverty to the middle class:
1. don't do drugs
2. don't do crimes
3. stay in school
4. learn what the school provides
5. get a loan for college
6. go to college, pick a major that pays well, learn the material rather than cheat
It's a pretty good default strategy. It doesn't take any miracles or unusual effort.
> astonishingly naive to think otherwise
Maybe you should tell that to the millions of poor people attempting to get into the US.
