2) great! I un-ironically love to see these anecdotes of minority success over adversity.
It shows that these things are possible if you want it. Success wasn't meant to be easy. If accept mediocrity in yourself, then that's the best you will achieve. It really is that simple
Not sure what you mean here. If anything, most major corporations are
looking for people who aren't white guys to move up and hire, even if that means they aren't the best
5.1) the data would prove otherwise, and as you are a numbers guy, I assume that data would resonate with you. as always, data can be manipulated, but there is plenty of raw, unfiltered information that is publicly accessible for you to view, should you care to analyze it yourself.
5.2) what defines ‘solidly middle class’? again, data points to a now 50-year old trend (accelerated in the past 12 years) of the erosion of the middle class as percentage of the population. yes, the upper middle class is stable and possibly even moving to upper class, but the ‘solidly middle’ group is shrinking, and lower middle has trended aggressively towards lower class or even poverty
Choices, right? The reasons why Americans aren't achieving middle class lifestyles anymore is because of poor choices being made by young adults. Go encumber yourself with $200k in debt for a 30k a year job, bad choice. Refuse to relocate to places with lower COL and more opportunities, bad choice. Shun trades and instead focus on non-economically viable "career paths" that go nowhere, bad choice.
6) I find this statement a perfect embodiment of exclusionary thinking. yeah, purple hair and face tats are unconventional.
but throughout history (and still today):
what if that purple hair is actually not purple.. but merely kinky, or worn naturally? excluded.
tattoos... tattoos are inherently indigenous and were co-opted by white culture and have largely reached a level of mainstream acceptance. however.. (anecdote alert!)
Imagine you are hiring someone for a sales position, are you going to hire someone who turns off a large segment of your customer population? If I am selling facial piercings, then I agree. If I am selling financial services, then no it won't work. Which of those two paths pays better? Honestly, I am not going to take someone seriously who doesn't take their professional appearance seriously. When you get a facial tattoo, that is pretty much you self segregating. Free choice and all cuts both ways.
my Ivy League medical school-educated childhood friend has full sleeves, from wrist to neckline, and now has a prominent psychiatric residency in a DC-area hospital. he is white. he has no issues when in his white coat. but I have reason to suspect he would encounter issues if he walked into a more ‘traditional’ workplace, like engineering or law, or even the trades, retail, or service industry. again.. dude’s white, with a white name, and is very ‘all American’ in appearance, but would quite likely experience exclusion because of his tattoos.
if he was a POC, with a non-Eurocentric name, or had natural hair, and had tattoos on his non-white skin? excluded, doubly or triply so.
Doubtful in medicine, particularly in pscyh. Medicine is massively non white, non male. Go look at the graduating classes of med schools around the nation. If something is covered for your professional appearance then it is a non-issue, that's why I specifically said facial tattoos. Let me ask you this, what if he had a swastika tattoo on the side of his neck? Should that cause him problems? What if he was Indian and that swastika was the hindu reference?
this last little quip actually bothers me a lot, and I’m a straight white dude. gender is a social construct. you can argue i’m a flaming liberal cuck or that I’m virtue signaling or whatever other incendiary ad hominem you want to throw my way, but science has evidenced that there is no naturally derived ‘gender’, only sex. This also goes for sexual orientation and identity.
Now, if you walk into a job interview with a they/them on your application or present as queer or anything but straight? In thousands of businesses across hundreds of industries across many income levels and skillsets... you. will. be. excluded.
Yes, I agree on this, you will, and honestly it will impact my hiring decisions. I don't want the drama of conflict, the potential HR headaches down the road, and the thousand other problems you run into with this sort of thing. Call me old fashioned if you want, but I don't understand how people have these non confirming gender roles where suddenly I have to refer to them in plural form or I am an *ist.
If you care to learn, read. If you don’t, i simply have no more time for you.
If you want to be trite about it and someone claim you have some sort of enlightened vision, that's fine, but don't think whatever you are reading that is reinforcing these views is the gospel. There are two sides to this and it isn't as black and white as you would like to believe and the solutions that many on the other side have bring with them horrendous problems of their own. So for all the reading experience you have, do you have the practical experience? I will give you one personal example.
A business I deal with at the board level had a problem with a long term employee coming out as transgender M2F. It was a ~1500 employee company where this person was in regular contact with a large number of those employees. The employee in question suddenly shifted and wanted their pronouns changed, access to the women's bathroom (not a private bathroom), and it eventually spiraled into problems where everything that went wrong was systemic discrimination. It was a nightmare for ~3 years that ended with them being terminated, they sued, they lost. That makes employers reluctant to wade into this. This is the same reason why I have a strict no political affiliating messaging policy in any of my businesses, we had an issue with an outspoken BLM person causing issues at work.
