They are careless because they have not found that it pays to be careful; they are improvident because the improvident ones of their acquaintance get on about as well as the provident.
This passage offers a sociological explanation for the perceived carelessness and improvidence of Black laborers, linking it to a lack of tangible rewards for diligence.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.
If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things there dwells Eternal Good, pitiful yet masterful, then anon in His good time America shall rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free.
Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.