How Elite Colleges Drive Income Inequality

I'm sure there are some — but probably not nearly as many as the libs would like to believe.

I took a poor black child under my wing when he was 4 years old, and let him play with my little white private-school kid of the same age. We lived in a predominantly white working-class city neighborhood. The boy was obviously smart, verbal, nice-looking and capable. He asked probing questions and wanted to be taken to see public buildings, such as churches and museums, and I was happy to take him. He lived in the "alley street" with his grandmother, and saw his mother only intermittently, because she had a large number of children with all different fathers. When he was 6, he and his sister came to me ashen-faced and wanting to be hugged. I sat them on the front steps and put my arms around them and asked what was wrong. He said his mother's boyfriend had killed the baby in its crib, then blamed it on them, and those two children had spent a school night being questioned by police.

The babykiller was caught and convicted, and I continued to help that boy and include him in group playground activities, take him places, buy him school supplies and give him life lessons in values. I went to bat for him with a nasty white teacher. He continued to show great promise; and would proudly show me good schoolwork; but his homelife was a wreck. Eventually his mother got her own place; and from time to time I would drive him home after he had come back to stay with his grandmother. The apartment was filthy, with all kids sleeping on one nasty mattress without sheets (to be fair, I had also seen this condition with a married couple of white psychiatrists whose kids were in my kids school).

From his age of 12 to 14, predictably, we started to have difficulties. I sat him down and explained how stable people have to work for what they have; that me and my siblings started working at age 12 and never stopped; that he would have to prove himself in this world, keep his nose clean and avoid bad kids and bad behavior; I also explained racism to him. I encouraged him to find worthy male mentors, sports, school or church activities to help him stay on track. But he began stealing from me. Little things would disappear from the house. A dollar and change from grocery shopping left in the kitchen, or five bucks in a birthday card, would disappear. If I left him in the car while I ran into the 7-11, my parking quarters would be gone from the ashtray. Then one day I caught him digging into my purse (which I had stashed deep in the closet) in an obviously well-practiced way; I guess he had been doing this to his mother and grandmother for years.

I sat him down and told him this was unacceptable and any more of it would result in serious consequences, about which I was specific. I went to his mother and told her he was stealing. She said, "What you think I can do about it? I can't do nothin."

I said, "You are his MOTHER. You may be the only one who can teach him right from wrong. Stay with it. Don't let him fail now. Her response: "Put him out yo house. That's what I do."

So, after several false starts, including teaching him how to do small jobs, write me a bill and get paid, and attempts to discipline him at least not to steal from his friends (since the small cash he would get would not make the sacrifice worthwhile), I reluctantly had to cut things off, and told him we could still do things together, but he was no longer to come inside the house because it was the consequences of stealing from us. But he stopped coming around altogether. I remember seeing him once on the street when he was 15, and we exchanged a truly heartbroken look and polite greeting. That was all.

Eventually we moved away from the area. Years later, when he would have been around 30, I looked him up on the Internet. The first thing that came up was his arrest record. He had become a small-time gangsta rapper, had garnered bad publicity all over the city, and had been convicted of a crime I do not wish to divulge here and had spent time in jail. I cried for days.

My point? By the time they get to college, it may be too late. Harvard and all such liberal institutions would be better served by returning to their original roots in the church and spending their money on orphanages for urban kids run by Ten Commandments values when they are small and JROTC values when they are past puberty, with horrible parents given only limited visitation, if that. But of course, that would all be against the Liberal Law. We are too far gone.

Why would I even consider an elite private college with most of my classmates from upper income groups and a prep school background? I would not have fit in nor done well in that academic setting.

I feel the same. It was hard enough to make the leap to being the first to go to state college when my mother never went to high school and we were lower working class. I suspect this is why Michelle Obama felt so out of place at Princeton. Not because of her color, as she claims, but because as an AA student she was out of her league intellectually and socioeconomically. Her children, on the other hand, would not feel so out of place.

“Gee, let me see - they are told by everyone in and out of government to give more points for being a “minority”, for being a female or for filling their ethnic “diversity” quotas, above any priority of simply “low income with great scholastic record” and what do you get? You get exactly what the colleges produced.

My own personal view is that the only thing that is presently sustaining the income rewards of an “elite” college degree is business world’s acceptance of what I believe is a myth that it produces anything “better” in any real sense. Its only “better” because the business world and government too keeps rewarding it, not because they or us would be any worse off if they didn’t.”

A brilliant analysis!

A great story of going the extra mile for a fellow human being. God Bless you for your efforts.

I also read that during the first vacation to Martha’s Vineyard, Michelle Obama, was snubbed by the black elite.
She was regarded as a ghetto girl. You are spot on about it not being race but rather prior academic background, family income, social status and so forth.

I did well in college and went on to earn an MA degree in economics from the University of Chicago (I sat in courses with Milton Friedman). My mom bragged to all her friends that I had met him!!

Bless you for listening.

Please, Lord, if he has children, help him try to do for them what he could not do for himself.