For Black Republicans, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is an obligatory fiction
Perhaps America’s highest-ranking Black Republican is Clarence Thomas. During his rise to the supreme court, Thomas loved to tell the tale of how his sister was content to survive on government assistance while he embraced the all-American ethos of hard work. “She gets mad when the mailman is late with her welfare check,” Thomas told a group of Black conservatives in 1980. “What’s worse is that now her kids feel entitled to the check too. They have no motivation for doing better or getting out of that situation.’’ It turns out, it was all a lie.
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“What has happened too often is that people who seemingly mean well have promoted things that do not encourage development of any innate talent in people,” explained another Black bootstrapper, Ben Carson. “Hence we have generation after generation living in dependent situations. It’s not that they’re bad people, it’s that this is what they’ve been given, and it’s all they know in some cases.” As secretary of the housing and urban development department, Carson, a former presidential candidate, pledged to reverse policies that “created a culture of dependency in urban communities”. Carson didn’t mention that those same policies provided shelter, food and even the ability to see clearly during his quest to become one of the most celebrated neurosurgeons in American history. But, alas, he has been discarded, too.
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The South Carolina senator Tim Scott is taking note. For years, he has repeatedly extolled the values of hard work as part of his origin story. He often recounts the tale of his poor, illiterate grandfather who – Scott conveniently forgets to mention – owned 900 acres in South Carolina.
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Even before Herschel Walker decided to vie for the Georgia Senate seat occupied by Senator Raphael Warnock, the NFL running-back-turned-bootstrap-evangelist made a habit of explaining how his work ethic and a don’t-quit mentality led to accomplishments as a student, multimillionaire and a business mogul. There was only one problem with Walker’s backstory:
It doesn’t seem to be true.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/for-black-republicans-pulling-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps-is-an-obligatory-fiction/ar-AAWscwL