I was brought up in a working class family, community and environment. I was never indoctrinated with the idea that entrepreneurial activity was my road to bettering myself. On the contrary, I was taught that path was closed to people like us, and our only hope to survive was to master a skill or craft which would make us an economic asset to our employers. But I was also taught that our employers were constantly working to prevent us from doing that by making our skilled labor unnecessary for their businesses. Failing to do that, they were constantly working to deny us the leverage of having mastered a skill they found essential to promoting their own success.

Born into an immigrant community and culture (Cuban working class Tampa). I was taught that learning a skilled trade was the only path to prosperity, when advanced education became available to the working class (post WWII) we suddenly had the opportunity to advance into the academic professional, administrative and executive classes which we still saw as "highly skilled trades". Entrepreneurial activity was considered off-limits, not for moral or ethical reasons, but because we perceived those fields were closed to us due to racism. But my people were cigar factory employees, highly skilled, but manual laborers. It is curious to note that the Post-Castro Cuban refugees were much more business-oriented, upper middle class types who felt at home in a commercial environment. In spite of the fact they arrived here with little more than the clothes on their backs, in no time flat they became the predominant entrepreneurial class in South Florida.

The Tampa and Miami Cubans were not only separate in social class, they also came to this country about a half century apart, for very different reasons. They were subtle differences between the two groups which I could nonetheless see clearly because I was embedded in that culture.

We all try to work through the superstitions of our youth, but we aren't always completely successful.