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I'm not asking about how these sorts of people affect poor black kids. I'm asking how someone like a middle-class woman explains the wider world to themselves. There is a pretty big group of people who fall between the extremes of "systemic racism has totally rigged the game against the underclass" and "HBD is true and there is no hope for any of them." This group is not super ideological, feels bad for poor people most of the time, but thinks that if the underclass had fewer kids at 14 (via abstinence or abortion or whatever) and worked hard at school, etc, then many of them would rise into the middle class themselves. Does the thought process only go as far as entry into the middle class? In that, hard work and respectability gets you across the threshold, but then further advancement is obsructed by shadowy puppet-masters? Is it just brute Karenism, in that there is no wider world to them, or that it consists only of NPCs? Is it an aloof acceptance of the hard facts of life, and requires no explanation? I'm asking here because there is no polite way to ask these people in real life. I used middle-class women as an example, but as many of the comments have pointed out, lots of people make these sorts of excuses. They can't all be HBD realists or DEI ideologues, can they?
If you are talking about moderates then the answer is they probably think there is some level of racism and sexism, but don't support affirmative action or CRT, and much as almost everyone else, they simply do not think too deeply about the situation beyond that. They probably vaguely sad when they see on the news some black kid was killed by the police, and probably hold vaguely "normie" views about not seeing colour personally, but of course the racist history of the United States is terrible. They probably think racism and sexism is real, but somewhat overstated. And of course like everyone else they are likely to see their own situation as the important one. If Bob was promoted and she was not, it is possible that it's because of sexism. Just like in the opposite situation Bob might complain that it was only because they wanted a woman in the C-Suite that he lost out. We are all the main character in our own story after all. When we do badly it is because of other people and when we do well it is on our own merits. It takes a huge amount of self-awareness and introspection to move beyond that. And for most people there is no real need to. Our selfish journey continues regardless.
The vast majority of people do not reason hard about their positions and about the wider world. Because for the vast majority of day to day lives it is entirely irrelevant. They hold the positions they hold because they are the positions their communities hold. Just as the average Christian does not think too deeply about the exact theological underpinnings of why they are a Methodist rather than a Catholic.
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My experience is that no matter your station in life, you earned it, your boss deserves it but depended on luck, and his boss is a know-nothing jerk who relied on nepotism and backstabbing.
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