(08-18-2015 09:58 PM)Fortis Wrote: I didn't grow up impoverished but I certainly had a lot of issues (severe depression, anxiety, poor eating habits and apathy), which is why I ask this question. I always get the impression that it's a lot of the black guys who otherwise have their shit together that seem to have the inferiority complex. A lot of the brainy black guys, if you will.
Speaking from experience, this comes from the fact that a lot of these guys have been caught between rocks and hard places socially and, particularly, romantically.
Growing up, they often have many issues with other blacks and, romantically, with black American women. They are frequently labelled (oreo this, Tom that, etc, etc) and otherwise insulted for being who they are. Their women clown them for being too soft or just not "down" enough. They're black (clearly), but they don't feel accepted as such by their own people.
Then they look at the other side of the spectrum and find out they're not really going to find full acceptance there either. They may feel they have much in common with whites and other non-blacks, but these people look at them and just see another black guy. They then judge accordingly.
Much has been written in this thread about how white women in the USA can be uniquely difficult to pursue for black men (particularly for relationships) given certain stigmas and stereotypes. These black men find that this still applies to them, even though they are (by the admission of their fellow blacks themselves) far from whatever the black "norm" is that these people are afraid to associate with. These guys get to university and find that, no matter how educated, "well-spoken", or "smart" they are, they still fight an uphill battle to get the same social/romantic results and integrate smoothly relative to their non-black friends.
In short, they find they have no place. Stigmas and stereotypes leave whites wary of them (too black for the whites), while their distance from many norms in the black community leaves them outsiders there as well (too white for the blacks). They don't easily find a place to call home, romantically or socially. They're in no-man's land. These circumstances can do a number on one's confidence and inner game, thus leading to the issues you describe.
On one hand, your failure to connect with black women and black culture in general can sap confidence. This is especially true when you see men who aren't necessarily better than you objectively (no better looking, no more well educated, no wealthier, etc) getting vastly superior results with said black women while exerting the same or less effort. This does a number on your inner game and self-esteem, and can have you wondering if
anything you do will ever get you any decent results.
Meanwhile, you deal with the same issues on the other end of the spectrum: you approach non-black girls who put up walls to you and make you work far harder just to get a word in edgewise, while your non-black peers (who are no better than you from a game, economic, academic, or professional perspective) have those same women opening up to them easily despite their putting in equal or lesser effort. This will do another number on your confidence, especially if you were raised among these very same non-blacks for most of your life and couldn't be much more well integrated. Realizing that even serious self-improvement (better game, better style, etc) often doesn't improve your station much in your earlier years as a older teen/young adult can do a big number on your inner game and leave you wondering, again, if you'll
ever get
anything remotely resembling good results.
In your darkest moments, given the realities described above, you might just give in and start to accept the pessimistic notion that you simply aren't good enough to get better results and never will be because you're too much of a weird outlier (stereotypically nerdy, "brainy" black guys aren't the norm). You'll conclude that the other guys you see getting superior results are simply better than you (since they're more "normal") and always will be. You buy all of this because your romantic results match these conclusions and do nothing to dispute them, hence the inferiority complex kicking in.
Fighting this off is no small task. Over time, as you become more aware of the socio-economic and cultural realities associated with your environment and come to understand the wider world (and opportunities) that exist
beyond your environment, optimism can creep back in. You start to realize that many of the issues you faced are less a function of you being shit than they are a function of your society having its own quirks and abnormalities independent of you.
A large dose of consistent, long-term self-improvement work helps as well, especially when applied as you become aware of the realities I just mentioned. The results of said self-improvement (ex: superior style, better game, more financial success, etc) are objectively valuable regardless of your appearance, and your possession of these objectively valuable things that cant be written off because of what you look like builds confidence that you're not so shit after all and will eventually get your fair share.
Your understanding of the environmental realities I mentioned above will allow you to reason that a lack of immediate appreciation for these objectively valuable improvements (ex: girls still reacting more negatively to you than your peers despite your improvement having given you better style, game, and aesthetics than said peers) may not be down to you, but to things out of your control. You gain a better understanding of the role your environment plays in your results. That allows you to decouple the reaction you get (which may be more negative than it should be because of what you look like) from your own conception of your worth, thus giving you a more accurate sense of your own value.
With this improved awareness of the realities I just mentioned, you also get better at actually countering the negative effects of your environment, helping to make better results more probable.
As you get older and gain more financial independence and life experience (ex: traveling) while making more improvements to the self, it gradually gets easier to see better results out on the horizon and right on your doorstep. As said results improve over time, confidence builds back up, you realize once and for all that you're not quite as shit as you thought you were in your darkest moments mentioned above, and you become less pessimistic about your future.
It takes years to get to this level. I wouldn't have made it without exposure to RVF and red-pill thought in general. For men without exposure to these things (which are crucial for providing the insight into the environmental realities I mentioned and guiding the self-improvement process), it can be a lot harder to kill an inferiority complex.
Quote:I can't necessarily speak for the experiences of our hood brothers, but I actually don't get the inferiority vibe from a lot of the guys in newark but those dudes have a slew of issues that go far beyond the scope of this thread. A lot of those guys seem a bit less concerned with girls of other races for whatever reason.
Because they didn't grow up surrounded by them.
When you are raised in an environment in which said non-black girls are pretty much all that's around, you care much more about what they think of you.
That's the curse of growing up in predominantly non-black environments as a black male in the USA. Your appearance will always lead to challenges with those women due to the stigmas and stereotypes associated with interracial relationships, but the fact that you grew up so accustomed to them means you will be more willing to cope with these challenges and will be more concerned about them.
If your hometown was 92% non-hispanic white during your formative years (the bulk of the remainder consisting of Asian Americans), and you were among the 2% black minority, all of your formative romantic experiences probably involved white girls. Your first crush as a little kid was probably white (maybe asian). The bulk of the crushes and dates you had throughout your adolescence were probably white (maybe asian). You were molded by this environment - by the time your emerge from it as an adult, you're almost certainly going to have a very strong interest in the women you grew up around and the physical traits they tend to possess. Again, that'll keep you pursuing them despite the challenges.
You might love black women too and try to pursue them aggressively as soon as you get to college and start finding them in numbers, but your isolation from them for almost the entirety of your youth will make success harder to find in your interactions with them. You won't really understand what they want, how to turn them on, and how keep them attracted, all of which takes time to learn.
Black men who have been raised in predominantly (or at least significantly) black/non-white environments are going to naturally care much less about what white women think because their early exposure to women wasn't dominated entirely by whites. Their environment just doesn't foster the same problems or concerns.