Get the down arrows ready; I am going to state an unpopular truth. Regardless of your race, economic status, or any other crutch you want to lean on when you are lazy, you will fail. If you have a good work ethic and are honest in your dealings with people, you have an excellent chance of success.
My life history is a microcosm of these two statements. At the beginning of my career, I was very diligent in learning my craft. I would come home from my job as a short-order cook and work on learning how to program. I got a decent break because I would work for $6.00 an hour as an independent consultant. Several candidates turned the job down because of the low pay, and they would need to pay all of the taxes involved. I took the job and, after three years, was making $10.00 an hour. I worked 8-12 hours a day programming, went home, and worked another four to six hours a day. After two years, I enrolled in an experimental college course teaching the 'C' language. I took several classes while working during the day. Homework took up much of my free time. After I completed four courses, I put a short resume on the College work board. A computer consulting company picked me up as a full-time employee. They doubled my pay and allowed me to learn a new programming paradigm.
One of the jobs I had in my career was teaching 150 programmers a new language and programming methods. They were going from procedural to event-driven programming. There were five classes of 30 programmers each. Of the 150 programmers, there were two who I considered excellent, one white woman and one black man. Both of these programmers excelled in the class and at various assignments. Of the remaining students, ten were good enough to proceed with little to no guidance; 30 were capable if they had some direction. The rest needed constant guidance and helped with simple issues.
Later, I was a team leader on this project. One of my friends, a black woman, told me that I am successful because I am white. She discounted all of my work to better my skills. Many people of color have leveled the accusation of White Privedledge toward me many times. None of these people ever asked me how many hours I spent working on being a better programmer and application designer. It was diligence and hard work that got me to the upper ranks of programmers.
I have met many people of all races that will never amount to anything in their lives. I say this because they are lazy and have no work ethic. Many of these people complain it is the fault of some nebulous power that has held them down. This nebulous power seems to affect those who do not apply themselves primarily. Some work hard and are honest, and they fail. There are far fewer people who are lazy that succeed.
When I was in the ARMY, I met people of every description you can name. The majority of the people I met were average people looking to better themselves by learning a trade and working for some company when they left the service. Almost everyone wanted to be a success. Those who worked hard at education and had self-disciplined did succeed in the military and civilian life. At that time in my life, I was coasting along. I did not try to improve myself, and it showed. Later I worked hard and made a difference for myself and my family.
There were two people I met in service; both were from Pittsburg. They both wanted out of the hood. Both came from single-parent households; their mothers made them study in school. The young lady borrowed an old typewriter and spent many hours learning to type. She was excellent on the keyboard. She would transcribe letters and do other typing for law firms in Pittsburg on a piecemeal basis. She wanted out of the hood and worked very hard to get out. She had self-discipline I have seen in very few people. My other friend was a young black man who fought to stay out of the gangs and learn in a school that was little more than a holding cell for eight hours a day to give the police a bit of a break, as he put it.
Both of these soldiers were disciplined and educated beyond what the school district customarily produced.
Other black people I met would hurl the Racist accusation whenever anyone criticized them. I was working on a large project; one of the programmers was a black man our manager was also black. I worked closely with the programmer; we will call him Jay. Jay was an alcoholic and would drink too much at lunch. The project leader tasked me with reviewing team member's code. I made comments on everyone's code. When I commented on his substandard code, he made the accusation; I only said it because he was black and I am a racist. Jay took the allegation to upper management, and management told me in private that the review of his code would not be allowed. They were afraid of his accusing all of the leadership of being racist. The allegation alone could destroy their careers.
Now, we hear from the Blacktavist that it is slavery that has caused the poverty in the black community. If this were true, why does a history of slavery in the West Indies not adversely affect their descendants? Slavery was never a wholly Eurocentric phenomenon. Slavery goes back many thousands of years before any nation-states in modern-day Europe or the Americas existed. Egypt and many middle-eastern peoples had slaves. The Muslims still have an active slave trade in many parts of the middle-east.
The word Slave comes from the word Slave. The Ottoman Empire and the Mongol hoards all took slaves from the Baltic region and from what is now Russia and Ukraine. These slaves were sold in Africa, Asia, and the middle east; the slavers castrated most men as eunuchs for the harems. Different cultures and invaders enslaved many western Europeans. The descendants of these slaves went on to build vast empires. As the saying goes, the sun never set on the British Empire. To blame slavery in the past on why one group is not successful is too simple an answer that does not stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. In Asia, many groups enslaved peoples of other tribes and lands. In South America, the Inca and Aztecs enslaved millions of people.
Slavery is not the reason why modern-day blacks in America do not succeed. A disdain and, in many cases, outright hatred of education is a significant cause of not moving forward in any society. When the black culture changes this belief, they will move up the economic ladder as their efforts and abilities allow. In the Free Market economy, the floor is zero. The roof does not exist. Bill Gates bought an operating system from a programmer and then licensed it to IBM. He made a vast fortune marketing the MS-DOS operating system. He created his wealth on the needs of a massive number of people.
Many industrialists improved production methods to cut costs; they then passed some of those saving to their customers. The improvement in the processing gave them a market advantage.
A tried and true method of making money is to see a need or create a desire and then provide a valuable solution to that need or want. Many immigrants to the US came here with little to no money. Some of these people bought sewing machines and started modest businesses in their apartments. They would mend or make clothes for their neighbors. The family members would help in whatever way they could, and the families lived very frugal lives. The immigrant would save their money and reinvest in the small business until they could move to a regular business location. One man in Brooklyn started making clothes in his apartment using his mother's sewing machine. The line caught on, and he is now running a sizable trendy clothing company. There are too many similar stories to give them here. Productive work and a frugal lifestyle have the best chance of leading to prosperity; if not for you, then for your family.