But this is the thing: all the problems you claim you cannot be held responsible for become, in that moment, merely random accidents for which you can never claim any control. They are beyond your control. They will merely happen or not happen, with you as a hog-tied bystander.
As uncongenial as taking responsibility for your life may be at times, it is still a vastly more optimistic vision than sitting around waiting for things to happen to you. Things happen to trees and old buildings. They should not happen to people possessing intelligence and power.
I say this, but of course the process of becoming personally effective can be a long one. In principle, though, we choose to empower or disempower ourselves with how we think. And self evidently, claiming to be a victim is a form of chosen helplessness. It is a call for the world to take care of you. The world may answer. More likely, it will claim to care, then do nothing, or something close to it. And until you wake up, nothing will change.
This, in my view, is the problem with much of the black community. They have been cursed with white leftists who tell them, year after year after year, that nothing they do is their fault, and that salvation can be had just by continuing to vote Democrat. It has become farcical. They even got a black President. What did he do for them, what did it mean for them? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Obama spent, as far as I can tell, zero time worrying about blacks, since he already had their votes, and their votes were all he cared about.
Trump, by implementing sane policies not even targeted particularly at the black community, has already done more for them than Obama. He didn’t pander to them. But he helped them nonetheless.
With friends like white “liberals”, blacks don’t need any more enemies. In their own subtle way, by denigrating their agency and power, white “liberals” have done vastly more harm than the KKK–which was an open enemy–ever could have.