Here are some thoughts for what they might be useful to you. Just thoughts. I'm not ranting.
I'm usually the only white person in business meetings at my work. All my supervisors to the very top are black. I celebrate this since I also remember a time when there was definite and planned discrimination against non-whites (black, oriental, and Native American) by those good ole boys. Even as a child I knew innately that people were people and that there was no inherit differences in who could fulfill what kind of work. At my job, we don't need to have riots. We frankly don't have issues. People were hired who could do the job and people do the job. We work together. A far as I know we don't have a reversed discrimination either: I'm treated just as I was by many other non-black managers in my past. This is normal, as it should be. It should have been this normal all my life. I didn't make the inequalities: that happened long before our days.
There are many folks who have a difficult time getting to a place of security. I am all for leveling this field we all stand on and I've seen half a century of change, most of it for the better in the job market and opportunities for college for black people. By the way, it's also changed for other non-white people and it's changed for women in the job market too. I celebrate all those changes.
Our most effective change will be from honest communication and hard work. There are no easy answers for good results. Life takes work. I missed my opportunity to go to college to be a doctor or an orthodontist, and I totally blew the opportunity for a full grant to college back in the day before I came to my senses. We need to help young people to figure out how NOT to miss their chances, and if they do, to be honest about the facts. I had to face up to my messed up past and go to college later, and it took work to complete the courses and take the exams for what I do now. And I had to pay back a loan. I'm glad I finally did, even if I'll never have the position or salary of a better profession at this late stage because it got me well beyond minimum wage and into something I love to do, so work has been a joy rather than a burden these last three decades. We can help all young people to get further in life if we can help them use or create opportunities for the best they can be.
That free opportunity for college that I missed wasn't missed by a lot of other low-income people back then. But it didn't always generate jobs and a better society or better life. In some cases it only used up taxpayer dollars for useless degrees. We have to stick with reality and to that end we have to figure out how to help people get training or degrees that actually result in a useful end.
I know it has helped many people to be successful who came from successful parents. I didn't have that, other than my dad was a self-made man and my mother raised us with decent language skills that it wasn't like learning a second language to communicate in the business world. They didn't help with my homework. They didn't even know how to enroll me in college. We became quite low income after their divorce, although we as kids were blissfully unaware of how well off we were before. Somehow we have to help the kids to do better than we did. I can see my adult kids doing that with their own kids. They are focusing on security for their families. And most of mine have managed to attain degrees that helped them earn a decent living and hopefully keep the poverty chain broken. Having two parents involved in my success could have made a big difference, so I can buy into the idea that the lack of dads in homes is a big cause for less desirable outcomes for our kids. I can tell you for me it took a lot of effort to overcome inertia. There were times that a life of drugs might have won out.
Overall, there are no magic cures. I suggest if we aren't careful in how we handle the liberties we have had and the gains we have made that we are in jeopardy of losing more than we know across society. Social stability is really important, and there are always tyrants waiting in the wings to overthrow us in the US if we don't stick together. It would be wise to be on guard against the advances of those opportunists. It would be wise to determine to think for ourselves and not be swept away into some sort of false narrative, especially one of destruction. I'm really shaking my head at the number of black police injured or killed, the number of black businesses targeted for looting, but then, I simply don't see that there is a benefit in destruction of property when what I want is to see that we all have opportunity to have our own property, our own successes, regardless of color. Let's tear down lies, but let's not tear down the dreams others have worked to achieve, regardless of color. Let's tear down barriers, but let's not tear down each other.
I'm on the watch for opportunities to encourage successes in young people of all colors because it looks to me not so much a color thing as it is an opportunity thing. My prior life as a teen was a way of life that would have eventually brought me opportunities of police brutality, but it's just not something that I would expect with the life I now have because I am quite happy being lawful. I have job skills I can use to take care of myself, which took care of my family, I have skills and a heart to offer help help to others, and life has been a satisfactory experience. And that any person of any color could do this is evidenced by the totality of the beautiful brown skinned individuals (all ladies but one) in leadership above me.
I have no desire to make my experience the narrative for you. You have the unique set of eyes that you have and nobody can be you better than you. I need you to be you. What else can I learn from you, because I'd like to learn from you. And how can I help you succeed?