Michael McWilliams on white privilege: Luck & opportunity – keys to success

Michael McWilliams has been looking at the concept of whiteness and the privileges that go with it. And while his thinking does not pen a solution to the problem, it does highlight an extremely sensitive discussion. In his first submission Michael looked at some of the secrets to white privilege, which forms the base of the entire discussion, while in part 2, he looked at how one obtains this privilege. It is a series of entries and in the latest piece he looks at luck and opportunity, the two common denominators behind highly successful people. Another interesting read. – Stuart Lowman.

By Michael McWilliams*

Michael McWilliams

We could go on and on, looking behind the achievements of highly successful people and the find that the common denominator is putting in the ten thousand hours, coupled to two other very important factors. Luck and opportunity.

Privilege Secret Number 10: You have to put in the hours early on if you want to be really good.

Luck and opportunity?

Bill Gates was lucky he was in the only school that provided free computer time to its students. He was even luckier in that he was born in 1955.

This made him twenty years old when the computer revolution caught fire. At twenty, Bill was neither too old (already in a career which was not computing) nor too young to have missed the launch date of the digital age. So for Bill and many of the computer age multimillionaires, being in the right place, California, and being born at the right time were essential to their eventual success.

Read also: Michael McWilliams: The secrets of white privilege

Malcolm Gladwell tells us that there are striking commonalities among computer giants.

Paul Allen, Bill’s co-founder of Microsoft, was born 1953 and the third richest man at Microsoft, Steve Ballmer was born in 1956.

Steve Jobs of Apple was born in 1955 in the epicenter of what would become Silicon Valley, Mountain View, California.

As for putting in ten thousand hours, the opportunity is often abetted by a super-keen parent, coach or teacher.

Savvy parents have often given, or even forced privilege upon their offspring.

Tiger Woods’ father encouraged him constantly. From eighteen months of age, little Tiger was taken to the driving range, every day, and let loose on a minimum of 500 golf balls.

David Beckham practiced for hours every day, after regular soccer practice, to attain pin-point accuracy with his place-kicks.

In short, if you want to attain excellence, you need the opportunity and the time, talent comes last.

Luck however is something over which we have very little control. To be born into the start of a world-changing industry, at exactly the right time is almost impossible to plan.

Read also: Michael McWilliams on White Privilege and how to get it

This needn’t mean that your own luck can’t be created.

There is no ideal time to begin working on becoming the best sportsman, chess player, investor, doctor or most other fields.

Historical periods of Advantage

Sometimes there arise, long periods of advantage or privilege through no fault of the recipient.

In South Africa, and to a lesser extent, the USA, a long period of Affirmative Action and Black Economic Empowerment has provided the opportunity for millions of people to grasp what must be a fleeting moment in history, to advance themselves through a legislated privilege system.

A few individuals have grasped these enormous opportunities and advanced their own interests astronomically. Their names are household words in their countries.

Because the benefits have only been available fairly recently, it is difficult to tell whether they will be translated into permanent privilege for the generations to come.

The signs are not good as the offspring of the AA and BEE privileged have not shown much aptitude or interest in building privileged dynasties on the momentary advantages their parents enjoy.

Read also: Mailbox: BEE – current version of Apartheid. Robbing the ‘Rainbow Nation’.

Compare the Mandela family here and the Kennedy family in the USA.

Old Joe Kennedy founded his moneyed dynasty on illicit liquor- trading during another legislated moment of opportunity, Prohibition.

Like Affirmative Action and Black Economic Empowerment, Prohibition provided a brief opportunity for those who could grasp the full scope of the legal or in this case, illegal window in which immense fortunes could be made.

Kennedy among many others, grabbed it with both hands. He had visions of grandeur and through political and financial manipulations became a respectable head of a respectable household, fathering Senators and even a President and war hero.

Joe Kennedy understood privilege and how to use it.

Al Capone, on the other hand, made his fortune in the same way as Joe Kennedy, but he had no road map to respectability. While Joe saw being a gangster as a temporary means to an end, Al only wanted to become a bigger gangster.

The Kennedy dynasty still lives, despite its many indiscretions and scandals.

The Capone dynasty died in prison with Al.

The Mandela dynasty seems to be mired in jealousy, and dubious dealings and is indicative of a family that has suffered from an absent father during the vital early years of the children’s upbringing.

Mother Winnie was left to do all the nurturing, but she also had to do what she had to do to survive, and wasn’t the greatest role model either.

The wealth and world admiration all came too late for the Mandela children and they could not enjoy their privilege when they really needed it, in their formative years.

So, as far as privilege is concerned, it can come too late to be of any practical value to the individual.

Read also: RW Johnson: Why Zuma’s ANC turning to racism, fuelling anti-white rhetoric

Privilege Secret Number 11: Grab the opportunity and milk it for every advantage, but have a long-term plan to continue benefitting after the advantage is gone.

How do Nations build Privilege?

After the Second World War, the Korean and Vietnam wars, the American Government instituted a very good benefit. It was called the GI Bill. What this was, was an educational benefit that every returning serviceman could take advantage of. Having wasted some of his productive years defending the country, he was offered the opportunity to attend college to obtain the degree of his choice.

Many thousands of returning soldiers, sailors and airmen thus became highly productive members of society after earning degrees and diplomas at government expense.

This flood of highly qualified people fueled the great rise in productivity and affluence that America enjoyed in the post-war years and continued after the other wars had ended.

In South Africa, many people have been blessed with jobs for which they have not studied or worked for. This transformation, as it is known locally, has injected a lot of wealth into families that had absolutely no inbuilt capital except some political or other connection to those handing out the jobs.

This has created two big problems. One for the country, and the other for the recipients of these jobs.

The problem for the country has become painfully obvious over time. We have a vast, highly paid government workforce that has no idea how to do the jobs they have been given.

This has hammered the economy and not delivered the services the masses expected, but can be rectified with sufficient political will. (See my First and Second Open Letters to the ANC.)

The problem for the individual is that it is Privilege with No Backing. What I mean by this is that, because the individual has been given a job for which they are not in any way qualified; they have nothing to fall back on if for any reason they lose that job.

If their position is compared to anyone who is in fact qualified for the job they do, one can see immediately that the qualified person, having lost his or her job, will be able to go into the job market armed both with his or her qualifications as well as their experience gained in the job they have just left.

The unqualified job loser on the other hand, has nothing to recommend him or her to any future employer. There are no qualifications and any experience gained in their previous job is of no importance because they were not really doing the job because they didn’t know how. Any potential employer in commerce and industry knows just how useless the applicant is and was, because he probably has suffered personally from the lack of service provision the applicant was responsible for.

This means that most deployed cadres who find themselves jobless are in fact unemployable, and certainly not in the salary brackets they have become accustomed to.

Read also: James Myburgh: SA intelligentsia descended into ‘racial madness’

This has a two-pronged effect on privilege building for that individual. Firstly, they must, as a matter of survival , hang onto their jobs by fair means or foul. Secondly, a wise deployee will see the writing on the wall and realize that this jobs-for-pals period can only be brief because the whole situation is untenable and must collapse eventually. Thus, the worker with any foresight will do his or her best to feather their nest in the shortest possible time by fair means or foul, so as to make provision for the looming threat of joblessness.

This has had the effect of promoting nepotism and the hiring of underlings even more useless than the hirer. It has also meant the explosion of corruption, manifest by the awarding of tenders that do nothing but part the ratepayer and taxpayer from their money.  Where tenders are not the available means of enrichment, the theft of government assets does the same thing.

All of this just accelerates the process of complete collapse of the whole cozy system.

To turn this sorry state of affairs to your advantage will take some individual willpower instead of the political willpower needed by the state to change the system.

As with most of the Secrets of Privilege, this also has something to do with education.

Just as the GI’s returning from war, increased their worth by going to college, so must the unqualified cadres improve their own worth by educating themselves.

It is likely that the jug built in the cadres early life to contain their education was not the biggest in the world, but it is still there and waiting to be filled.

Government has very generous adult education packages that are almost completely ignored by deployed cadres. Study leave and subsidized fees are there to build privilege, seize the day and enroll in further education to increase your intrinsic value and make yourself employable for that time when the whole false economy comes crashing down.

Studying for a matric would be of huge benefit to you.

Even if you don’t have matric, universities will often credit a student with work experience in lieu of a formal matric.

This can be done by correspondence and in privacy, so even if you were not entirely honest about your qualifications when you got your job, you will have eventually attained these qualifications while on the job.

If your employers wont pay for your education, use some of that princely salary to fund yourself. The palatial house and German limo can wait until you can sustain them if you lose your present job.

Privilege Secret Number 12: Turn a temporary advantage into a permanent privilege by adding value to yourself.

True Privilege is being your own boss.

Now that you have made yourself employable outside the nepotism/Deployed Cadre world, the next step is to attempt to make yourself truly free by becoming your own boss and running your own business.

Up until now, you have been surviving on the kindness of strangers for your wellbeing. Faceless rate or taxpayers paid for your job or you have been legislated into a job in the private sector which you only qualified for by breathing and possessing the skin color of the moment. Similar qualifications that were required by the previous regime, by the way.

Remember, the wheel turns for you, just as it did for your privileged predecessor. No one likes paying for labor that doesn’t more than earn its keep, and the moment circumstances change, anyone who isn’t an asset to their employer will find himself or herself mercilessly on the street without a paddle, as it were.

Generational Privilege

After education, the greatest gift you can give your two children, is a viable business to work in, improve and inherit when the time comes.

While your workmates are squandering every penny they have on unaffordable hire-purchase agreements and mortgages, you should be putting money aside so as to be able to fund a business.

There are two ways to think about starting or buying a business. Either you look at something with which you are familiar. In other words, a business that would compliment the skills you already have. This is the time to be brutally honest with yourself. If you don’t have any real skills and you only hold your job because all around you are equally useless, don’t bet on yourself.

In a case like this, a ready-made business, with good management already running it, or a franchise is the better choice.

A franchise will provide training and systems to ensure the greatest chance of success. An established company, while the most expensive route to business ownership, has a track record of earnings and some kind of credit rating at the bank. All aids to having a good investment.

To hedge your bets, a business that has machinery and hard assets is far more sellable than one whose assets walk out the door at knockoff time.

A food franchise is a better bet than an advertising agency. A motor workshop better than an accountancy firm and a dry-cleaners better than a nail-bar.

As to what kind of business you want to start or buy, this is complex.

If your aim is to pass it on to the kids, it should be something that will challenge the children whose parents have followed all the rules of privilege. It should be something that could be expanded upon and which has growth potential countrywide.

You could also skew the luck factor by selecting something at which you know, by personal experience, will be a growth industry. Say for instance you are working in a municipality, and you know that the sewerage works are soon-to-be dysfunctional, you may want to consider going into the water treatment business.

You know your towns electrical system hasn’t been maintained for twenty years, maybe an electrical maintenance company would thrive.

The opportunities in South Africa are probably the best they have been for a hundred years. Nothing that government is supposed to do is in fact being done properly, so the choice is very wide.

Privilege Secret Number 13: Rather spend lots of time thinking about a business choice, rather than spending time fixing it because it isn’t ideal

To be continued.

• Michael McWilliams, a member of the Biznews Community, has been married for 35 years and has three sons. Born in Johannesburg, schooled at Marist Brothers Inanda and St. Charles Pietermaritzburg he was a paratrooper in SADF and the captain of the SA Parachuting Team which won the Bronze Medal in the World Championships. Author of “The Battle for Cassinga” and the novel “Osama’s Angel”, his career has ranged from TV News cameraman to national marketing manager of Peugeot and running his own design consultancy. His hobbies are opera, hunting and classical music.

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