Feigned laziness functioned as a survival strategy against oppressive labor.

Evidence

Economically depressed Black folk had to find some way to eat, some way to lessen their oppressive workloads in the nastiest and most taxing jobs, even if it meant feigning laziness. They did not find much help from the government, receiving the same Old Deal of racial discrimination. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 864

Categorization

• XREF: This re-contextualizes the Stepin Fetchit caricatures from the prior paragraph as material survival strategy, consistent with the reader’s materialist framing of Kendi’s argument.