One is a huge advantage.

No, it is not. He was a mechanic. My mum is an RN and was ultimately much more successful, even before meeting him. There was no advantage to him being white. The only advantage was towards the end of his life his boss retired and sold him the business since they had been friends for decades. Even then, not much happened. So your point is moot. There never was an advantage to him being white. The only reason he was able to take the business was because he had been smart enough to get a small business certificate from a community college after graduating high school.

There are lucky people out there that get out of inner cities. These are not the majority of the cases I'm afraid. You have to be really lucky.

My whole argument is that it WASN'T luck. No it isn't the majority of cases, but there is no reason that it shouldn't be MORE common than it is. Some people legitimately try and fail, but plenty of others don't even bother and just delve into whatever culture their minority is known for and don't do anything. The communities as a whole need to change their attitudes. Someone having a kid, then ignoring it so they can get a hit or go have sex? That's asinine. What kid raised like that is going to care about school? Many (not saying all or even a majority of) parents in poor communities, urban and rural, are at least able to care for their children enough so that they try hard in school and thus have a chance to succeed. The only luck involved is when you start talking about Tupac and 50 cent. They get idolized, and their success is what could be considered lucky, although they themselves probably had to work damn hard in the beginning.

I concur. But I would also contend that there is some luck involved in to whom you are born. You can't pick your family...

But none of that even matters in what I'm talking about. My parents worked up from a middle / lower-middle class lifestyle to where they got when I was born. I am lucky to have been born to them, yes. But so what? Whatever happens in college and beyond will be to my own credit or fault, not my family's. They don't have any vast network of contacts, like the Bush family does or anything. But they started out like many urbanites. That wasn't due to who they were born to. I am lucky, my advantage having gone to a prep school, although I had to work and it was paid for mostly by loans, rather than out of pocket or via scholarships. My decision now is whether to utilize that knowledge or let it go to waste. Again, that's my decision, not luck. My luck is that I may have an easier time getting ahead later in life, whereas my parents did not have that "luck" and so worked much harder than I may have to in order to get where they are.

But if you were simply following up on the last part of my post...a baby born to a crack-whore (I'm making a broad generalization) is at a severe disadvantage and I honestly don't know what to do with them. The government can't afford to support them, and unless they already want to learn, it'd become a fiscal blackhole. At the same time, if people decided to stop wasting their money on pimping out their cars, then that could easily put them in a better situation financially. Most people in general don't have their priorities straight. Hell, I'm paying for gas, personal bills, and food. I have been for 2 years and still can't make a budget worth shit and am almost addicted to buying stuff on eBay or just online in general.

But to look at it one way, Capitalism is meant to seperate fools from their money. I know I'm one of many, many people who suck at savings and balancing their budgets. I'll either learn, or eventually be very poor, my so-called "advantage" laid to waste by poor financial decisions.

Any success or failures you have in your life are very strongly influenced by your upbringing. You can not expect someone who was raised with bad morals and a poor work ethic to go very far.

Right. And it is hard even with good work ethic and morals in my opinion. The number one way people find good jobs in this country is networking. When your web is full of crack, violence, and poverty it is hard to escape.

It is definately a community problem.

That's what I've been saying...it is tough, and people manage. In addition, the parents should be spending the time to instill the good work ethic into their children, like my grandparents did. They didn't have much money or anything, but they concentrated on making sure he had a strong moral base. There is no single solution, obviously, but better parenting would inevitably give those children a better chance at getting out. Like Tadpole said on one of the other threads, Americans are too individualistic, and only care about what suits them. When parents stop having all the accidental kids that they ultimately can't take care of, things may start to change.