No, [BLEEP]. I am not very ambitious. Me. The guy typing this. Not blacks. Because of this, I believe I would face a harsher bias if I had black skin. Not because I think blacks aren't ambitious, but because it feeds into a stereotype. I think other people would attribute it to my race and not to me as an individual. Not only that, but I also wouldn't want to misrepresent blacks since white folks in this country have a hard time treating them like individuals, yourself seemingly included.

It's a luxury, if you want to call it that, that people just see me, the individual, as lazy and don't attribute it to my race. That said, if I were ambitious and cared to try to work my way up the corporate ladder, I think it would be much easier if I had black skin. All of the benefits and none of the drawbacks.

I grew up around black folks, dude. We didn't have a lot of money. I was a baller. My nickname in high school was Cracker, and I'm not joking. I have to consciously make myself speak and act a different way than I did when I grew up to assimilate as an adult. I was just talking with one of my black friends the other day about code switching, and it didn't even occur to her that I had to do it as well. To make it worse, I can't code switch when I hang out with other blacks because they assume I'm faking it, you know, since that's a common white person thing to do. You need to be careful how you posture.

---