That's what social pressure is by and large. And when it's pushed by the empowered majority it has real teeth that can grind whole peoples to powder. That people in my memory publicly doubted whether a black would ever excel at quarterback without everyone immediately understanding the racist nonsense at the root of that is just one example of how effective that sort of propaganda can be, both at denying opportunity and masking the motivation for it.
and only people that have never been encouraged to think for themselves and end up with low self-esteem
Or, people who've been told they're not good enough for long enough, or who are met and grow up inoculated with all sorts of societally supported ideas attacking their sense of self-worth grow up largely and unsurprisingly thinking within the limitations of norms and expectations that were never rooted in their best interests or even objective ones.
and rely on others to tell them how they should feel would ever fall for.
White kids, like us, grow up with healthier self-images. It's true today, and was dramatically true in decades closer to the painful victories of the Civil Rights Movement. The social order sets the bar for and by us. But everyone relies on others for a great deal of how they see themselves, especially as children, unless they have antisocial personality disorders, in which case they can't care about that or about anyone else. Anyway, that sort of negative aggression in subtext (and not long ago in law) has a way of impacting what we do, what we believe we can do and how we approach life. It's difficult for us to understand the hill other people have had and have to walk up just to walk up and down the regular hills and valleys the privileged enjoy.
Raise your children to think for themselves, to be realistic that they will excel in some things and suck at other things, and not to look for excuses to blame another for their shortcomings, and to not be offended by every little nit-picking thing that others think or say.
This isn't about unreasonable expectations or excuses. It's about the impact of racist thinking on the norms of a nation to the extent it took a bloody war to free people of color and another hundred years of struggle before that freedom
began to carry the same rights everyone is entitled to see protected.
And for pete's sake, tell them that everyone does NOT deserve a trophy.
Them? Entitled? See, you think that's what this is about because of where you start from. But it isn't and it never has been.
You shouldn't get a trophy for something you suck at.
Who decides you suck and in what way? Is it Jordan and then everyone else should just collect their paycheck? That sort of thing?