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It's because if the reasons are subject to the hard reality that there's nothing that will make a poor white kid run a marathon faster than a Kenyan, there's no point in the kid trying in the first place. And that's not something people are willing to say.
It's one thing to design society to be Gattaca, it's another thing entirely to be told that Gattaca already exists and statistically, certain things are close to impossible for you and your children. An entire generation that was told growing up that they could be President or go to space hasn't come to terms with it.
That's probably a part of it.
There was an element of inflated expectations that kids in my generation grew up with. I get the sense that Gen Z does NOT have such a core belief of "I am a being of unlimited potential I just have to choose my goal and work at it!" So they're more nihilist, whereas a lot of millenials had to learn some hard lessons about their own
I, personally internalized something like The Mewtwo Lesson. But it turns out that the "circumstances of one's birth" are pretty damn relevant to your long term outcomes, and you can either lean into your existing strengths or you'll inherently underperform and end up fighting twice as hard for half the success. And that's assuming nobody has actually stacked the deck against you.
Cold meritocracy pokes through either way. We have more ways to make people's skill differentials apparent than ever before.
The original Pokemon games were lowkey based for teaching children a lesson.
You can give your Pokemon team all the tender loving care in the world, the best socioeconomic factors, take them on bike rides, play them the Pokeflute, bring them on cruises like the SS Anne, nurture them from the time they were level 5 with careful battle experience and with the best potions, ethers, elixirs, and rare candies that money can buy.
Yet, a Mewtwo who spent half his life experimented upon in a lab and the other half of his life isolated in a cave can solo your carefully-crafted, nurture-maxxed team.
Funny anectdote on that. In the original Red, Blue, and Yellow games the early version of Effort values meant if you leveled up your Pokemon the standard way, just constant battles, its 'under the hood' stats would actually be higher than if you cheated it with rare candies to reach level 100.
So one time I battled my cousin using the Gameboy link cable (how's that for old school) and his team of straight level 100 'mon, and me, my strongest being a level 98 Mewtwo, and it turned into a surprise stomp in my favor, although it did come down to both of our Mewtwos in a slapfight to end it. I had NO CLUE about the hidden stats, I just chose to believe that because I had raised my pokemon with more care and attention as opposed to just pumping them with chemicals, they wanted to fight harder.
So the lesson is that yeah, sometimes pure effort does win over mere pedigree and performance enhancing drugs.
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