You are clearly a cut above the rest of us here at FreeRepublic!
“You are clearly a cut above the rest of us here at FreeRepublic!”
Not at all. I didn’t have a choice. I had no relatives that I could stand to live with, But I was used to being independent. I was tired of the same, low-level technical job that I had since I was a junior in high school. But all I could afford at the time was community college.
On the other hand, I became friends with a young black guy in the same class, who also came from a broken home. I was amazed by the social support programs that were available to him as a “protected minority.” He easily qualified for free tuition, free books, free transportation to and from campus on the bus, free meals, and even a monthly stipend for living expenses.
He was clearly bored by the whole situation, and didn’t really take our program seriously. But he was too dependent on a lifestyle that didn’t require much effort beyond the bare minimum, so he kinda slept his way through the two years.
At least I learned first hand about the futility of trying to categorize people by race. The whole point of the civil rights act (I thought) was to make race a non-issue.
But in the government’s hands, it became a primary factor in determining who gets breaks, and who doesn’t.
And here we are still.