I hate to break it to you, but the majority of black people are not handed shit on the daily. Yeah, some are, but not a whole ton of them. Just because a few oreo hipsters made it into school doesn't really mean much at all to the populace.
This represents a basic disconnect between blacks (and native Americans actually) and non-blacks.
Whites, Asians, even Fancy Hispanics, aka honorary whites, they look at the situation that exists for blacks and natives and are like shit, what an excellent setup! You mean to tell me that if you’re black or native, you can get into Ivies with less than half the credentials that whites or Asians would need? Amazing, I would exploit the HELL out of that opportunity and ensure my kids are prepared to do so as well! So we’re confused by the seeming failure of almost all blacks and natives to even see the opportunity, much less take proper advantage of it.
Blacks and natives, though...blacks seem to actively resent opportunity. They were given opportunity by whites because that’s what white people would want in their situation. We would want opportunity, so that’s what we provided. We thought we were giving them the chance to achieve, for the best to rise to the top, which to us is what’s desirable. That’s the key to success, for your best and brightest to be given the opportunity to achieve, and since they’re the best and brightest, they’ll accomplish that.
But they just see uhh what, you want me to work? Fuck that. Opportunity is undesirable because it only offers the possibility of success if you work hard enough - ie, the way of the whites and honorary whites. What they want is equity. Equity means no work because it isn’t about opportunity, but rather about skipping the parts where you work and strive, and getting right to the part where you get a paycheck. And since we skipped all the effort, the paycheck is literally for doing nothing but being black.
And natives, honestly, they’re just such a morass of dysfunction at this point that it isn’t surprising none of them can see it. My god, any kid on the rez who can maintain a B average and write an essay of *any level of quality* on how they’re from the rez, that’s a full ride through life. They’re just so ruined as a people that the learned helplessness has taken over and they can’t do anything to benefit themselves.
So giving black people all these opportunities for a century was, to the givers, the bestest gift ever because it’s what the giver would want...but it wasn’t received that way because it isn’t what black people want.
