Myth #3: Entitlement is the particular affliction of the African American community.

There is a narrative that Black Americans have an entitlement mentality and that it is our civic responsibility not to feed into that mentality.

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In their book Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair, Duke Kwon and Gregory Thompson tell us that entitlements are a frequently expressed concern in response to their conversations on reparations.   The concern is that reparations might contribute to a culture of entitlement among Black Americans.

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“This expresses the barely concealed assumption that entitlement is the particular affliction of the African American community and that the desire for outside economic support entails a form of civic vice.  The truth, however, is that the history of American economic policy is a history of government subsidization of White Americans.  As we will show in Chapter 3, from the very beginning of the republic, the economic well-being of White Americans has been the fruit not simply of their personal initiative but also of critical entitlement instruments such as land grants, homestead acts, wage standardization, mortgage subsidies, education grants, and tax deductions—almost all of which, for the majority of American history, have excluded African Americans from their benefits.”

- Duke Kwon and Gregory Thompson, Reparations A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair