What impressions does Gladwell give of his ancestors in the first part of the epilogue?

In the second part of the epilogue, what details does Gladwell give to help prove the argument of the book?

What details does Gladwell give in the third part to reinforce his argument?

How does Gladwell connect the story of Daisy Nation to the stories of the other "characters" in his book?

What is Gladwell's final conclusion?

What impressions does Gladwell give of his ancestors in the first part of the epilogue?

 

Gladwell utilized the first part of the epilogue to separate reality from fantasy. He told the readers his family background that is necessary to understand the basis of the novel Outliers. Gladwell wants us to understand how his family came to be, How his mother really found success, and the odds the family was up against in order to achieve any success at all. We learn about his ancestors' history, slavery, Jamaican social structure, and the reasons his family was presented more chances than others. Chances often yielded based upon the color of their skin. Gladwell gave the impression that his ancestors succeeded because of the many oppurtunities that were presented to them at that time.

 

In the second part of the epilogue, what details does Gladwell give to help prove the argument of the book?

 

The second part of the epilogue details how lighter skin color is highly prized in Jamaican society at the time. Privileges and oppurtunities are much better to those who have fairer skin than those who are black. The author presented evidences and facts that these 'coloreds' had a lot of status, and this supports one of Gladwell's argument that success is not achieved by talent or hardwork alone, being born to the right family at the right time also plays a role.

 

What details does Gladwell give in the third part to reinforce his argument?

 

The third part of the epilogue are further examples of Gladwell's family background and how skin color affected their social status and behaviors. Gladwell recounts his Aunt Joan's shameful experience of disowning her daughter for a moment just because of her darker skin, and his mother's experience of being prejudiced and contemplation of her own prejudice to her darker skinned relatives. Gladwell reinforces that his family is also not immune to skin color prejudice, and this supports his argument that social status, whether inherited or not, is a factor that can determine oppurtunities and privileges in life.

 

How does Gladwell connect the story of Daisy Nation to the stories of the other "characters" in his book?

 

Gladwell utilizes the story of Daisy Nation to explain to us that although the success stories we hear may be true, much of the bigger truths are left out. These important details, which are the different factors that play a role in a person's success are often overlooked. The tale of his grandmother, Daisy Nation, tells us the complex background that gave her lineage a much better chance in life.

 

What is Gladwell's final conclusion?

 

Gladwell's final conclusion to Outliers is that outliers - the standout, successful people of our society - benefited from a web of advantages and iheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky—but all critical to making them who they are. In this way outliers are in fact, not outliers at all, as they are a product of overall benefits from chance and society.

Step-by-step explanation

 

The first part of the epilogue

 

The first part of the epilogue tells us that the author can simply tell us a linear, simple success story of his ancestors, but instead told us his ancestors' complex history to separate truth from the non-truth. He emphasized that Daisy Nation, his gandmother, as being "renowned for her beauty" is "a careless and condescending way to describe her." Gladwell says she was "a force," and it was her drive and her support of her daughters that helped them succeed academically. Joyce - Gladwell's mother - didn't actually get a scholarship to the boarding school—only her sister did. Even though they couldn't afford the tuition, the Nations sent Joyce to the boarding school anyway.

 

At the end of the first semester, Joyce was awarded a scholarship because a different student had been awarded two scholarships—and she gave one of them up for Joyce. The family had no money, but Daisy was determined for Joyce to go. Daisy borrowed money from a Chinese shopkeeper whose children she had taught.

 

Joyce Gladwell owes her success to William M. Macmillan, the student who gave up her scholarship, the Chinese shopkeeper, and her mother, Daisy Nation.

 

The second part of the epilogue

 

The second part examines the facts on how Gladwell's grandmother, Daisy Nation, benefitted from the Jamaican social hierarchy of the time. These passages are the evidences:

 

" Look at the extraordinary advantage that their little bit of whiteness gave the colored minority. Having an ancestor who worked in the house and not in the fields, who got full civil rights in 1826, who was valued instead of enslaved, who got a shot at meaningful work instead of being consigned to the sugarcane fields, made all the difference in occupational success two and three generations later. The slaves who were not so chosen had short and unhappy lives."

 

"It is not surprising, then, that the brown-skinned classes of Jamaica came to fetishize their lightness. It was their great advantage. They scrutinized the shade of one another's skin and played the color game as ruthlessly in the end as the whites did. "If, as often happens, children are of different shades of color in a family," the Jamaican sociologist Fernando Henriques once wrote:

the most lightly colored will be favored at the expense of the others. In adolescence, and until marriage, the darker members of the family will be kept out of the way when the friends of the fair or fairer members of the family are being entertained. The fair child is regarded as raising the color of the family and nothing must be put in the way of its success, that is in the way of a marriage which will still further raise the color status of the family. A fair person will try to sever social relations he may have with darker relatives... the darker members of a Negro family will encourage the efforts of a very fair relative to "pass" for White."

 

Daisy herself "was the inheritor of a legacy of privilege" thanks to her light skin color. Jamaica began as a nation of slaves owned by European sugar barons. Her great-grandfather, William Ford, was Irish; her great-grandmother was a black slave and Ford's mistress. Their son, John, was mixed race, which put him higher on the social ladder than his mother. Children of these types of relationships were usually emancipated, or freed from slavery, and educated. John had more opportunities than darker Jamaicans, and his privileges passed through each subsequent generation.

 

The third part of the epilogue

 

Gladwell reinforces that his family is also not immune to skin color prejudice, as the following pasaage from the book showed us:

 

" One of my mother's relatives (I'll call her Aunt Joan) was also well up the color totem pole. She

was 'white and light'. But her husband was what in Jamaica is called an 'Injun'—a man with a dark complexion and straight, fine black hair—and their daughters were dark like their father. One day, after her husband had died, she was traveling on a train to visit her daughter, and she met and took an interest in a light-skinned man in the same railway car. What happened next is something that Aunt Joan told only my mother, years later, with the greatest of shame. When she got off the train, she walked right by her daughter, disowning her own flesh and blood, because she did not want a man so light-skinned and desirable to know that she had borne a daughter so dark. "

 

This tells us that it is not easy to be honest about where we came from, and it would be easy to just tell a plain, simple story of success. This is in support to Gladwell's argument that when we hear success stories, sometimes the bigger, integral truths are ommitted because it's not easy to build the bigger picture behind success.

 

The relation of Daisy Nation to the other characters in the book

 

The author reveals to us his ancestor's story not just to gain sympathy but also because Daisy, his grandmother is also a good example of an outlier like the rest of the characters. Daisy, like the others, benefitted from those that came before her, as is quoted from this passage:

 

" My great-great-great-grandmother was bought at Alligator Pond. That act, in turn, gave her son, John Ford, the privilege of a skin color that spared him a life of slavery. The culture of possibility that Daisy Ford embraced and put to use so brilliantly on behalf of her daughters was passed on to her

by the peculiarities of the West Indian social structure. And my mother's education was the product of the riots of 1937 and the industriousness of Mr. Chance. "

 

What is Gladwell's final conclusion?

 

Gladwell, after making an example of Daisy Nation's story, and concluding that Outliers are indeed the product of many factors, left us a thought provoking question:

 

" These were history's gifts to my family—and if the resources of that grocer, the fruits of those riots, the possibilities of that culture, and the privileges of that skin tone had been extended to others, how many more would now live a life of fulfillment, in a beautiful house high on a hill ? "

 

Essentially he finally concluded how wonderful it would be of everyone is given the same chances, opportunities and social context that his ancestors have taken advantage of.