reply to post by MegaCurious
Your post reminds me of the movie
Eagle Eye.
As far as the OP, I agree that poverty brings out the worst in people, but there are also many other factors adding to the mix here in America.
It's hard to get up and run when there's a huge weight on top of you and everyone around you is running seemingly weight-free. That fact alone is
like an invisible weight added to your back. It's not impossible to run, but it's very hard.
It helps when you have a good support team around you, helping you up when you fall and encouraging you to press forward, assuring you you can do it.
It's true that when people believe in you it makes you believe in yourself.
Sometimes your own family can keep you down by telling you you'll never get out or become better your whole life. When your mind accepts it, it's
who you become.
You don't get to choose the family you're born into, the people you're surrounded by early in life. If the people you're surrounded by make you
feel accepted, you stay next to them and addapt to their way of living and you feel you have a 'place in the world'.
This false sense of comfort can sometimes trap you in a bad place and you don't realize this until you're older and it's too late to try to get the
children you brought into the world out of this downward spiral environment of gangs, violence and drugs.
It's easy to say that there are plenty of white people born in the pit of poverty who climb their way out and make a better life for themselves, but
remember, when they go to the better areas, where the better jobs are and there are no gangs, drug wars or violence, they look around and see other
white faces which makes them feel comforted, accepted, a sense of 'place in the world'.