Their great defect as laborers lies in their lack of incentive beyond the mere pleasure of physical exertion.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “Their great defect as laborers lies in their lack of incentive beyond the mere pleasure of physical exertion.”
Editor's note · Context
This statement identifies a key perceived limitation of Black laborers, attributing their lack of economic drive to a focus on immediate physical satisfaction.
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Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.
The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.
The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o’-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host.
A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.