Sound Familiar?

“In March of 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. told his own airplane story. A white man seated next to King had recognized him, and began to offer advice on how blacks could improve their state in America. “Now the thing you all need to do is something for yourself,” he said. “[A]ll other ethnic groups have come to this country and they had problems, too, just like you all have, but they lifted themselves by their own bootstraps.” Through a thick accent that prevented him from pronouncing the word “negro” correctly, the man told King how his own parents had come from another country and done just that. Although King didn’t refrain from telling the man that these remarks were insensitive and unhelpful, he didn’t respond with anger, accuse him of racism, or of being part of the white supremacist patriarchy.

Instead, King notes that the encounter made him “a little despondent… disturbed… that some of our white brothers and sisters don’t understand.” And although he didn’t feel like arguing, King proceeded to engage the man in constructive conversation, educating him on just how the situation of blacks in America differed from that of other immigrant groups: they alone had been brought to America in chains and kept as slaves for over 300 years, and were freed with no resources to start building their lives, whereas other immigrant groups came voluntarily with such belongings and wealth as they had, and were given land-grants, low interest loans, and federal subsidies. No group had truly lifted itself by its own bootstraps, and it was especially absurd to think that blacks should do so. “I believe in lifting yourself by your own bootstraps to the extent that that’s possible,” said King, but “It is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he should lift himself up by his own bootstraps. It is even worse to tell a man to lift himself up by his own bootstraps when somebody is standing on the boot.”

https://quillette.com/2021/01/17/three-plane-rides-and-the-quest-for-a-just-society/

Enough is enough.