Maybe being here in AA and before that Warren is skewing my perspective, but I don't see the -10. Maybe it's BECAUSE there is such a large minority population here. It's possible that the south is a lot different, but what I see here is black people being treated pretty much like whites, asians, greeks, indians, lesbians, geeks, and martians.
I also don't see someone coming FROM OVERSEAS as having less connections/money than someone from the working class. Maybe less expectations. My dad, putz though he may be, washed dishes for years just to get by. He wasn't even a citizen, so I don't think he was even eligible for wellfare. And he couldn't (and to be honest still can't) speak proper English, if by proper you mean unaccented. Sometimes even I have to ask him to repeat himself on the phone. Starting with no money is one thing, but starting with no money, connections, citizenship, etc is a lot harder... but it's harder still if you have high expectations. The so-called American dream is something that was handed to me, so I can't entirely see it from the other side, but it wasn't handed to him any more than it is to a working-class black.
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I also don't see someone coming FROM OVERSEAS as having less connections/money than someone from the working class. Maybe less expectations. My dad, putz though he may be, washed dishes for years just to get by. He wasn't even a citizen, so I don't think he was even eligible for wellfare. And he couldn't (and to be honest still can't) speak proper English, if by proper you mean unaccented. Sometimes even I have to ask him to repeat himself on the phone. Starting with no money is one thing, but starting with no money, connections, citizenship, etc is a lot harder... but it's harder still if you have high expectations. The so-called American dream is something that was handed to me, so I can't entirely see it from the other side, but it wasn't handed to him any more than it is to a working-class black.