There is something in human nature that seeks to be morally justified without being moral. Victimhood supplies that.
If you pay attention you will notice lots of people doing this; when you meet them, or before they offer an opinion on something, they have to establish their bona fides as a victim so that, in their minds, you will take them seriously.
Its just an odd quirk that especially in recent times people have fallen in to.
In any case, slavery has been used heavily for this purpose.
Most people get their moral sense from the culture. As a consequence when the culture goes toxic, they have no way of seeing it, and no way of understanding what has gone wrong in their lives. And the more that goes wrong in your life, the more victimhood you will suffer (and inflict) and so the cycle gets stronger.
The problem in most of our inner cities is a simple one; broken families, substance abuse. Not enough believing Christians per square mile.
Your first line is brilliant.
And the welfare systems encourages women not to marry the father of their children while the men turn to selling drugs as a way to make money.
I think that’s a theory worth pursuing. I think it’s more that people seek the POWER that comes from moral rectitude but are unwilling to make the sacrifices required to actually EARN that power. Martin Luther King prompted an entire nation to embrace racial equality, not through bombast and extortion but by exposing the inconsistency between prejudice and Christian principle. He had the moral high ground and used it to leverage away decades of discrimination.
Contrast that with today’s mis-named “civil rights” movement. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and BLM are clearly NOT appealing to “the better angels of our nature.” They are trying to wield the power of the Victim without being victims, and they are encouraging the same abuse in their followers. Their ridiculous exaggerations and outright lies demonstrate the sheer paucity of their position, and their desperate need for a false moral aura.