General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Quick Question... Why should black people love white people? [View all]Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)The Civil Rights Act was passed mostly by whites but only after much struggle (including fighting and dying) by blacks. The same is true of abolition.
So what your question amounts to is: "Name some great problem that affected blacks, like slavery or Jim Crow, but about which blacks did nothing, choosing instead to just sit back and wait for whites to address it." Well, you're right, no one can point to an issue that satisfies those criteria, but that's hardly surprising.
You could say that it was a white guy who invented the phonograph. That benefited blacks. I don't know enough about the history of science to know if any blacks were involved in laying the groundwork that made Edison's work possible, but there was probably no fighting and dying.
Every race has its heroes and its villains (as does every gender, every sexual orientation, etc.). Trying to assess an entire group isn't particularly informative.