I think my current circumstance is a combination of hard work, good choices, and luck. DIsentangling them is not so easy. All are contributing factors. As to your former points, I do believe that whiteness and my middle class upbringing have helped me, and I think that the data are not very useful. These aren't contradictory points. Were I not middle class, for example, I may not have had a support network while I took a couple extra years to get on the right path for me. I'll certainly admit that I shared the article without fully digesting it, because I thought it was interesting, and I thought it would be a conversation starter (obviously it was, since we're still talking about it). After your critique, I went back and took a closer look, and it seemed obvious to me that they were comparing data sets in which two variables had been manipulated--an automatic DQ in that type of analysis. Perhaps the source material did a better job (I assume so, because no journal would publish such quality data), but I didn't go back and read it. Sure, but to what extent? That's the point. There are certainly many contributing factors, and without knowing them in quantitative terms speculation is all we're left with. In the end, we're arguing about the small space between, because we're in complete agreement that education is the most important thing. No matter how shitty I was as a kid, I'd be nowhere without an advanced degree. Why do you believe it was "white privilege" and not your doctorate that enabled you to become an art collector?
I think we can speculate that poor dropouts have bad outcomes, and rich graduates have good outcomes, without stretching credulity...
You did not mention good looks. We have a question: Is education associated with improved life outcomes? Somebody gathers data and finds that people with more education tend to have better outcomes than people with less education. That is evidence that helps us answer the question. It does not tell the whole story. Perhaps being tall helps too. (Seriously.) We assume that there are both tall and short people in both the dropout and graduate groups, so any height effect will cancel out. This might be a bad assumption, and we would have to ask another question and gather more evidence to find out. We will never determine all the ingredients that contribute to each success; that would require a biography of every individual. But that doesn't mean we can't make justified generalizable conclusions with some level of confidence.I think my current circumstance is a combination of hard work, good choices, and luck.