It is hard to understand privilege when you are born with it. In his semi-fictional series ‘Colin in Black & White’, Colin Kaepernick uses his experience of an adopted black kid living in a mainly white town in California to describe “white-man privileges”.
For some reason, this blog audience is mainly Italian dudes, so it might be fair to assume some sort of additional introduction on who Colin is might be due. Or, you know, Google…anyway, he’s this guy:
Colin in Black & White depicts Colin Kaepernick’s journey as he pursues his passion for becoming a (American) football quarterback and the racism he faces in the pursuit. The series portrays non-violent racial treatment that a black American or an outsider experiences because he or she is not white. Colin Kaepernick’s journey is motivating and important to understand that not all indifferences are verbal or physical, but sometimes psychological and behavioural. How it affects a person cannot be understood unless and until one puts himself in the victim’s shoes.
My wife is mixed-race so I, in a sense unfortunately, already knew a lot of the things shown in the Netflix show. One summer, me and my wife were at a friend’s house and we spent an entire evening trying to explain to him, a white French guy born in wealth, what is white privilege; he’s a smart and very kind person and yet…he did not get it. He could not admit he had an unfair advantage in life. And the night ended up with my wife in tears.
Shows like Colin’s are important so that people understand, for example, why you do not ask a man in his 30s if it is safe to walk in a street when it is dark. The bar is set by the most vulnerable: it’s a woman’s opinion that counts. You need to live the experience through her eyes and then judge. Or even better, just take a step back and acknowledge this one is not for you. Definitely, do not conclude “well, if you do not feel safe, then just stay home”, asshole.
Anyway, probably not the topic for this blog. If you are a black kid and feel uncomfortable in a certain situation, you might think the problem is you. On the other side, if you have access to Colin’s experience through the show, you might then feel better because you realise “so, it is not me!”.
Boomerang
Some weeks ago I was back in Italy visiting my parents and I went out for dinner with a childhood friend. At a certain point he told me he just finished watching the Netflix show about GameStop (I did not see it) and we discussed the story. He does not work in finance and never traded in his life, yet he was so excited about it that he expressed his regret of not having been able to live those events live. He also asked me if I traded those stocks because he would have loved to.
The story of Michael Lewis writing Liars Poker to dissuade folks from a career in finance while becoming THE reason why a lot choose that path after reading it jumped immediately to my mind.
Yes, sometimes these things backfire quite impressively.
Ignorance is not a bliss
Even when it is a miss, I strongly believe it is important to have more transparency, and of the kind everyone can consume, around all the aspects of life. We have too many success stories and too few about failure.
Colin in Black & White is a huge FAIL in this sense. I understand you couldn’t do the show based on my black colleague working in accounting because, even though he was subject to the same racism and even if he has been successful in his life (all considered), you needed a greater story. You need to show that you can be Colin, the athlete sponsored by Nike, not a random dude on LinkedIn.
But the part where he ditches the baseball scholarship because he WANTS to be a quarterback…sends a very bad message.
I have a colleague whose son plays football in one of Liverpool FC academies: not the official youth team (if it exists, I am not that into minor sports) but neither your local neighbour kids team. That probably puts him in the 90th percentile of players his age in the UK. I can understand why someone would think that “they made it” at that point: you are the best of everyone you see around you. Everyone is telling you Phil Foden’s story or Raheem Sterling’s and you think “that’s me!”.
That’s also because journalists write about players who made it. Because that’s what fans read.
In reality, his chances to play in the Premier League moved from 0.012% to 0.5% (source). It is a huge jump in probabilities but, to put it in another way, it is like now he has to be the best player in an 18-team league (each team with 11 ACADEMY players) to make it as a pro. Still liking your chances?
It is harder to grasp your reality because no one will ever tell you the story of Foden’s other 10 teammates who did not make it. I still remember how shocked I was as a teenager, watching the NCAA basketball tournament final, a game broadcasted internationally, played in a real arena with thousands of fans attending, when the commentator said only one or two of those players would make it as pros.
Stonks
The great aspect of the last two years is that retail traders and investors chronicled all over social media not only their wins but also their losses. Some of them even jump-started their writing career because of that, like Jack Raines. Reading about people losing money (like you) helps not because “a trouble shared is a trouble halved” but because it makes you understand the real probability distribution. Ain’t no survivorship bias.
Hey, you might be stupid because you attempted at something with very low odds of turning into a success but you are not stupid-er than everyone else around you.
You can be the hero of your own story because you finally see it on tv. Representation works both ways. It can push you to do something you thought was not possible and to re-assess something that you thought was too-possible.
Base case
How do I assess my decision-making ability? Should I be happy or disappointed by my career? Spending four hours to prepare for a job interview is too much or too little?
It is a very foggy day in London and I feel we navigate life with the same visibility. We assess stuff based on our own, limited, vantage point. At least now we have various, even entertaining, ways to reconsider our circumstances: books, podcasts, docs, you name it.
I spent the last week reading about the FTX mess. It has been a very loud place but, the positive aspect of it, is that everyone shared their own (valuable, if you follow the right folks) opinion. Not only that, on Twitter you can find everything: old interviews, articles, and even the Alameda pitch deck! I might not have been offered the chance to invest at the time but I can try to be honest with myself and see how I would have acted if I had.
A valid counter-argument might be that we have too much information now, that we are submerged by noise and false signals. But if you stay curious and curate your sources, your understanding of the world, and of yourself, can only improve.
What I am reading now:
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