lowing wrote:
Pierre wrote:
lowing wrote:
the limits are personal. It is your life, you are free to pursue what you will....................................or not
OK, but WHY do you limit your own possibilities? Why did you say you would not become a doctor, lawyer, postal worker, president, but instead an aircraft mechanic? What made you make that choice?
I like airplanes.......Some like biology, some like the law...........Tell ya what, why don't you just come out and say where you are going with this, instead of trying to manuver me into a corner for the kill.
Bummer, you don't play chess, do you?
The point is, we are all the product of our ancestors, our education, our environment, you name it. When we decide on something, we base our decision on what we know, what we have learned, how we were teached, among other things. Race
is a determining factor, as are other factors, such as social status and skills, wealth, etc. All these factors are connected to each-other.
Remember what Braddock wrote:
Braddock wrote:
I don't think anyone at any stage argued that personal responsibility wasn't ultimately what is needed to succeed to any degree in life. What some people were arguing was that demographically most African Americans don't have the same head starts in life that many white people do and as such levels of education and social awareness in relation to such issues are more likely to be worse in African American communities. As Cam pointed out on numerous occasions social awareness doesn't magically appear at birth, it needs to be instilled and if society doesn't address it's social problems and continually work to improve awareness then the problems will not get any better...and people like you who choose to dismiss statistics and the existence of such social problems only perpetuate the cycle.
It's very easy for white America to point the finger at the problems of the African American community when they themselves have had a few hundred years head start on the back of work done by slaves.
As to my initial question - if you believe personal responsibility is key to everything, and everyone can become what he wants if he's willing to work for it, then why aren't you president of the US? - your answer was that we are all different, some may find sollace in being a doctor, some a pilot, some a small business owner, some a teacher, some a postal worker, some a truck driver. Yes, we are all different, but why? What makes the difference?
What in fact you were saying was that we don't decide for our own, but we make our decisions based on our prior knowledge, our education, and the social status of our parents and family. If you are a WASP, you have definitely received a head start compared to a kid who grew up in the ghetto.
So, your decision in becoming an aircraft mechanic was probably not only being founded by your love of airplanes.