There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs-partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.
-Booker T. Washington, certified “black enough” to make comments on the grievance industry
But Dr. Washington would not have believed that one hundred years could go by and there not be any change in that basic paradigm.