It made sense to encourage a Black individual (or non-Black individual) to take more responsibility for his or her own life. It made racist sense to tell Black people as a group to take more personal responsibility for their lives and for the nation’s racial disparities, since the irresponsible actions of Black individuals were always generalized in the minds of racists. According to this racist logic, Black people and their irresponsibility were to blame for their higher poverty and unemployment and underemployment rates, as if there were more dependent and lazy Black individuals than
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