Individual success stories do not substitute for legal protection for most black Americans

Evidence

When we are thinking about the plight of black Americans, we can celebrate Robert Harlan’s success, but it is not to be used as a model, because it was not of his own making. He succeeded in a system that thought of him as property because of a powerful white man, a tenacious mother, and sheer luck. Robert didn’t need the Thirteenth Amendment because he could rely on his white benefactor. The overwhelming majority of black Americans did not have that kind of family connection. They needed the protection of the law and the Thirteenth Amendment, especially the part that empowers Congress to pass legislation enabling a pathway to success for all black Americans. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 400

Categorization

• XREF: Directly addresses the ‘bootstraps’ objection to reparations arguments — pairs with Coleman Hughes-style critiques that Brown must answer.