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Apple Only Wants To Put Its Stores Where White People Live, Investigation Reveals (theoutline.com)
Brian Josephs, writing for The Outline: New York's northernmost borough is the city's most diverse, has the lowest income per household, and is the only borough without an Apple Store after one opened up in Brooklyn's predominantly white neighborhood of Williamsburg last year. This trend holds true on a national scale. That means 251 of the 270 stores, or 93 percent, are located in majority-white ZIP codes. Of the 19 that are not located in majority-white ZIP codes, eight are in ZIP codes where whites are still the largest racial bloc. For context, Garden City, New York, a city with a population of around 22,000 that is 94 percent white, has an Apple Store. Lake Grove, New York, which has a population of around 11,000 and is 89 percent white, has an Apple Store. By comparison, nearly 1.5 million people live in the densely-packed Bronx, which is only 21 percent white. Bronx residents must travel either north to Ridge Hill or down to the Upper East Side to get to an Apple store. Apple told me it couldn't comment on the record about what criteria it uses to decide where new stores are built or the demographics of its stores' neighborhoods, but USC Marshall School of Business professor Ira Kalb reasoned that the company is "going after the high-end of the market, so their store location choices typically go after areas that are considered upscale."
My ancestors emigrated (actually escaped, from what my genealogically inclined uncle figured out) from somewhere in German-speaking Europe in the 1830s. But there's no real "accumulated family wealth" -- my dad grew up pretty poor in the Ozarks in a family of 9 kids. For a while in his teens they lived in a house built in the 1880s with no indoor plumbing at all, and this was the early 1940s.
He got drafted into the army in 1953, and after that merely worked his way through a series of sales jobs until he retired. No college education, but he did finish high school.
In theory, if he grew up poor, shouldn't he still be poor? As far as I know, the only low-cost land my ancestors ever had was a farm in eastern Kansas in the 1880s, but that's about 2 generations before my dad was born. The farm is still owned by a relative, but no "land wealth" was ever accrued or given to my dad or his dad.
I'm inclined to believe in the cycle of poverty, but I don't think it's 100% of the story. It's almost like there has to be material poverty, extreme ignorance, and other factors as well. There's too many people like my own relatives who basically grew up with nothing who didn't end up in poverty themselves for just material poverty to be the only explanation.