There's Definitely A Very Slim Hope Of Being Like Us

It would seem an awful lot of the denizens of the internet are pissed off with Gene Marks, for what they see as a tone-deaf article dripping with patronising platitudes and white privilege.

I'm not sure what all the fuss is about.  I mean sure, if I were an ex-teacher, I might want to point out that assuming the conceptual framework of adulthood is available during childhood is to fundamentally mistake how the human mind develops.  If I were someone who dealt with probability for a living, I'd likely be enraged by the suggestion that because two groups of people both have a strictly positive chance of achieving the same goals, the difference between those chances isn't what should be focused on.  And if I was someone with any kind of racial awareness whatsoever, I'd point out a) it's one thing to offer advice to black kids, and another to presume to tell them how you would act as one of them, and b) if you've written that advice for Forbes, you're not actually offering advice to the black population, you're offering comforting "we're not to blame" bullshit to well-off white guys.

Since I'm clearly not any of those things, however, I say we should applaud Marks for being unafraid to deal with significant obstacles and nigh-insurmountable power imbalances by offering advices both obvious and unrealistic.



And yes, I realise that from a certain angle, I've just equated the struggle of black youth to prove themselves sufficiently exceptional as to be permitted to earn the same breaks in life white people take entirely for granted with the struggle of Bill Clinton not have interns suck his dick.

Don't shoot the messenger, people.  I'm not responsible for what went on in the 42nd President's head.

Dude looooved getting his dick sucked.