How's Your Lot?

"On the other hand, I didn't think it was a good idea to make poor blacks, or anyone else, more dependent on government. That would amount to a new kind of enslavement, one which ultimately relied on the generosity -- and the ever-changing self-interests -- of politicians and activists. It seemed to me that the dependency it fostered might ultimately prove as diabolical as segregation, permanently condemning poor people to the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder by cannibalizing the values without which they had no long-term hope of improving their lot. At the time, these ideas seemed to me a logical extension of my distrust of "the man," though in fact they were rooted in the lessons Daddy had taught me. I didn't yet know how heterodox they were, much less that they were about to lead me away from the radical politics in which I thought I believed."

Clarence Thomas
My Grandfather's Son