Yikes, he's a White South African! Thanks, I unfollowed him on Twitter. Genuinely thought he was a Blue Martian.

A white South African whose family came from apartheid South Africa...the problem is not his skin colour.

I don't do collective punishment. The NYT piece on him showed that he wasn't a racist.

Nobody mentioned racism? Also, Musk benefited from his father's wealth.

I dare you to prove how; the only verifiable account is that he had enough privilege to immigrate to Canada with like $1,000 to his name. He took student loans. People who knew him back then characterize him as almost pathologically frugal.

The "elon and his brother walking around with emeralds in their pockets" thing is a story straight from 1 interview with his estranged father and verified by nobody. The nearest verifiable records show lifetime earnings from the mine of ~$400k before tax.

What's more, elon's dad was elected to local office on an anti-apartheid ticket, which was a bit of a dangerous move for him.

We all benefited from our ancestors killing opposing tribes so I'm going to ignore that too. If everyone you know is pure, you're doing better than me.

No one mentioned racism? Then what's apartheid, mate. Come off it.

Our ancestors, sure. But my dad wasn't a rich white guy from apartheid SA who invested in my first company and financed who knows what else.

... you're saying it's racist of me to mention he's from an extremely racist system that reserved land and particular careers for members of a particular racial classification? Are you okay? Are you on the right site?

Maybe he was rich maybe not, but this is what Elon has to say:

> “One thing he [Musk's father] claims is he gave us a whole bunch of money to start, my brother and I, to start up our first company [Zip2, which provided online city guides to newspapers]. This is not true,” Musk says. “He was irrelevant. He paid nothing for college. My brother and I paid for college through scholarships, loans and working two jobs simultaneously. The funding we raised for our first company came from a small group of random angel investors in Silicon Valley.” [0]

Errol invested between 20-30k well after Zip2 was on it's way and they closed a huge round weeks after. His father took credit for helping him but the Musk brothers strongly deny it [0], and Elon literally slept in the office and showered in the local YMCA to get off the ground [1]

Even Elon's wiki page misreports this, but the Zip2 wiki page has it right.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200817165150/https://www.rolli...

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/the-rise-of-elon-musk-2016-7...

>Our ancestors sure

So your lineage won some and lost some yes? What is the point of saying at one time your people benefited from conquest but this other time you didn't? So what?

Sounds like cope and sour grapes. He's a successful, wealthy, and accomplished man. That's a good thing. Why would anyone want to be on the losing side of the equation? Are you ok?

> you're saying it's racist of me to mention he's from an extremely racist system that reserved land and particular careers for members of a particular racial classification?

What on Earth? Obviously I'm not saying that.

I don’t understand this whole ‘tar the son with the (perceived) sins of the father’.

Does this logic mean that if you have the misfortune to be born into a family that has the capability to perform it’s root functions more effectively than others (providing education) your achievements are worth bunk because you don’t have a story of adversity to overcome?

Don’t get me wrong I lean left, believe capability is evenly distributed and opportunity isn’t, but how is this a useful slight?