https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/02/the-rise-and-fall-of...
“ As a student at Penn, I received a crash course education on the finer nuances of whiteness. The Fraternity system allowed the groups of same-caste whites to congregate together. There were Jewish, Southern White, WASP, and International White frats. While they didn’t put a billboard up saying “if you are not this or that, please don’t apply”, everyone surmised pretty quickly which house was which. My house was one of the traditionally more diverse fraternities, at least as far as Penn fraternities go. In the early 1990’s, the house got into a bit of trouble when a member of the WASP frat called a black brother by a racial slur. One of our house’s brothers or pledges retaliated by kidnapping a brother of the WASP frat, tying him to a flagpole in the black West Philly ghetto with a boombox playing Malcom X speeches.”
This dude clearly has serious issues with race. The framing of that is insane, it’s still an interesting article but it is heavily inflammatory
It's the US that has serious issues with race, not black people like Hayes.
Direct and not PC about making its points.
SBF is Jewish. The ‘right kind of white boy‘ is an antisemitic dog whistle.
As a white boy, this is pretty funny to me.
I'll take it over the discourse I normally hear but my standards are low.
It's provocative and dishonest for him to not once acknowledge SBF's privileged circumstances or well-connected family, something which directly aided in his success and that the vast majority of people wouldn't be able to replicate. The post is generally well-written and makes some salient points, but it's obvious that the author shoe-horned in SBF. A different person, like the topically relevant Elizabeth Holmes, may have made a more cohesive argument.
> It's still clearly provocative to suggest Bankman-Fried's Stanford educated, genuinely "privileged" upbringing as the son of well known Stanford professors is somehow reflective of hundreds of millions of people rather than his own circumstances. Doing something for clickbait doesn't somehow make it not provocative.
It vaguely alludes to his parents being upper-class Stanford law professors. It does not specifically talk about SBF's father being an influential law professor and scholar[0], SBF's mother leading a powerful democratic PAC[1], SBF's brother having worked on Capitol Hill and the "Democratic Party-aligned consulting firm Civis Analytics"[2][3] — let alone Caroline Ellison's alleged family connections. I am not insinuating that there's a grand conspiracy theory — this should all be taken with a grain of salt — my point is that SBF's unique personal circumstances gave him access to capital and connections in government and industry that were pivotal to his success.
It would be like saying that the disgraced "DreamWorld" project was able to scam thousands of people and receive funding from Y Combinator because the founder was an upper-class white male; there's obviously a grain of truth in that statement, but it's a dishonest portrayal of events because it does not mention that his co-founder was friends with someone at Y Combinator and that perceived endorsement was what lead so many people to trust the project.
[0] https://twitter.com/JagoeCapital/status/1590805884556673024/...
[1] https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/6/21046631/mind-the-gap-si...
[3] https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/guarding-against-p...
> You're the one laser-focused on race here. You got triggered by the headline, and you missed the forest for the trees.
I did not get "triggered by the headline", I read the entire article and pointed out that it fails to acknowledge SBF's personal privilege and family connections because the author was dead-set on writing an article about race and needed an archetype — he literally admits to this in the article.
) I have been itching to write this essay for some time, but lacked a foil and context to make it relevant to my readers.
As I've said in another comment it's a worthwhile read, but his explanation of why SBF was able to dupe so many people falls a bit flat.
> In Pax Americana, it is verboten to suggest that the caste system is alive and well.
I'm not sure what you're trying to imply with that quote; I am not American, nor do I believe in American exceptionalism. I also don't think that SBF is a “well-meaning wunderkind [who] tried to do too much good at once”, but that doesn't mean I agree with the article.
Where did I indicate that I didn't understand it? I have American family and friends.
I simply pointed out why calling someone a "White Boy" could be considered inflammatory, and you responded with a non-sequitor implying that I'm trying to ignore America's problems.