Black people are lazy. That myth is as old as slavery.
Ironically, while enslaved people were forced to toil from sunrise to sunset, enslavers, the beneficiaries of the unpaid labor, often called them lazy. Over time, this became a stereotype that associates Blackness with submissiveness and backwardness. This stereotype has never been anything but an anti-Black lie. Oppressors pulled it out of the side of their necks, and these examples prove it.
We Built America: An entire group of people can't be lazy. We have built much of America, including the White House, Wall Street, and even the design of Washington, D.C. And that’s not the only lie about our laziness essential to debunk.
Welfare Queen: In the 1980s, Reagan added the myth of the "welfare queen," an unemployed Black woman who misuses government assistance programs, to the myth of Black laziness. The truth is that we receive less government assistance than any other racial group, according to a 2019 study. So why does debunking these myths matter?
It matters, not to prove anything to those who spread these myths, but for us to recognize the role colonialism plays in our everyday lives without us even realizing it. With this knowledge, we can build a world where our Blackness isn't anything but beautiful.