The lie of Black inferiority made white brutality easy to bear

Evidence

One idea he insistently taught,” King told the audience that night, “was that black people have been kept in oppression and deprivation by a poisonous fog of lies that depicted them as inferior, born deficient, and deservedly doomed to servitude to the grave.” He went on to say that “so long as the lie was believed the brutality and criminality of conduct toward the Negro was easy for the conscience to bear.” — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 227

Categorization

• DEFINE: Du Bois’s version of ‘the lie’ — that belief in Black inferiority is what makes brutality conscionable — extends the reader’s definitional task.