No individual black conduct could have secured economic freedom after slavery

Evidence

After chattel slavery, black people were hit with every kind of oppression and degradation imaginable. There was nowhere they could hide, nowhere they could escape the grip that white supremacy had on this country. … What I learned was that there was nothing that black people could have done to forge a safe path to economic freedom and self-sufficiency. There was nothing they could have done to fulfill Reverend Frazier’s dream of sustaining themselves with a little something extra to spare. Everything they did would eventually put a target on their backs. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 244

Categorization

• XREF: This is the ‘every path was blocked’ claim that grounds the saturation argument — objectors often respond with ‘individual effort should have sufficed,’ and Brown pre-empts it. — connects to: No course of black conduct could have secured post-emancipation economic freedom — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 246; Lack of wealth since slavery’s end drives Black vulnerability today — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 1327; Slavery-like conditions persisted legally and forcibly after emancipation to block black wealth building — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 50
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: No course of black conduct could have secured post-emancipation economic freedom — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 246; Lack of wealth since slavery’s end drives Black vulnerability today — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 1327; Slavery-like conditions persisted legally and forcibly after emancipation to block black wealth building — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 50

Broader Connections

• No course of black conduct could have secured post-emancipation economic freedom #expands (0.98) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 246