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I tell my friends this all the time. If someone has something you know they can’t afford it’s because they’re getting money from their parents/grandparents and it’s wild. https://twitter.com/Such/status/1272007112118251522
Here we go, generational wealth in my family or "why despite all the bullshit 'the Irish and Italians were discriminated against when they came here' arguments, my family is firmly upper middle class in three generations."
We’ll use my paternal grandpa’s side of the family because I know more about it than the others. My grandpa’s dad was the one who immigrated to the U.S. from Sicily, around the turn of the century. Not sure exactly the year. He was young w "nothing in his pocket and dug ditches"
He married my Great-Grandma. His middle son, Gaetano (Tom) was my grandpa. A harder working man you will never meet. Only had an 8th grade education, he worked in a sweatshop where he met my grandma (who went to work on her dead older sister’s birth certificate when she was 13).
World War II broke out. He joined the Army, fought his way across Europe came home and got a Civil Service job, as a garbage man.
Stop there.
Think about that one.
Stop there.
Think about that one.
He, a man without a high school education got a civil service job. Black in New York City at that time? Sorry, no, you don’t get to pick up the garbage. So, anyway, he and my grandma got married and bought a house. Yep, wait, let’s stop again. They bought a house.
They bought a house. In Elmhurst, Queens, in the early 1950s. Could they afford it? Nope, but back then Queens was considered the “country." They polled their money with her brother’s while my grandpa’s mom came to live with them. My Grandma worked too and they made it happen.
Could Black family’s buy houses in that neighborhood back then? No. The neighborhood was almost entirely Italian American, first and second generation American. The neighborhood built up, so did the churches, so when my Dad and Aunt came along, they were sent to Catholic school.
My grandparents worked hard for that. Still, only Catholic kids could go back then and they were WAY better than the area public schools. Were the schools segregated legally? No, but the neighborhood was, so much so that there were no Black kids in those schools.
This is when things started to get a little easier for my grandparents. My grandma, studied for her GED, got her diploma and went to work for the Department of Welfare. My grandpa was still working two jobs, so between them, they were bringing in a real “middle class” salary.
My Dad flourished in school, did well on the COOPs (a test used by Catholic grammar schools to place into HS) because school was all they had to worry about as kids growing up in a working-class neighborhood in the 1960s in Queens. It was basically a suburban existence.
My Dad’s HS, in particular, was excellent, but my grandparents, just eking into the middle class, still couldn’t afford college. Thankfully, CUNY was still free. He went to CUNY, got a degree in Criminal Justice.
Stop again. Free College. FREE. COLLEGE.
Stop again. Free College. FREE. COLLEGE.
He met my Mom, who was a bond trader on Wall Street (w/o a college degree, yep....). Between them, a cop and a bond trader, they STILL couldn’t afford a house in the neighborhood they’d both grown up in, so how did they do it?
BORROWED A DOWNPAYMENT FROM MY DAD’S PARENTS.
BORROWED A DOWNPAYMENT FROM MY DAD’S PARENTS.
Two generations from ditch diggers to generational wealth because my grandpa without a HS education could get a civil service job and then buy a house (with his wife’s brother) in a neighborhood that Black people weren’t allowed to buy in AND send his kids to college for free.
Three forms of White Privilege (I’m sure they didn’t exactly FEEL like privileges, but DEFINITELY WERE) and here I am, with my master’s degree, making more money than my grandpa or his ditch-digging dad would have ever dreamed.
My family is just one example and obviously, anecdotal evidence, but I know HUNDREDS of white people for whom this is definitely hitting home.
So, yeah, generational wealth is a thing and it's not just a rich people thing. It's a white privilege, so get off your high horse.
So, yeah, generational wealth is a thing and it's not just a rich people thing. It's a white privilege, so get off your high horse.