Assume a Can

There is an saying in philosophy that "ought implies can." It's ascribed to Immanuel Kant, who put it this way:

For if the moral law commands that we ought to be better human beings now, it inescapably follows that we must be capable of being better human beings.

Which is reasonable. After all, it doesn't make much sense for the moral law to command the impossible. (Actually, let me not make that last statement. Christianity, at least as far as I understand it from many people both commands people to always obey the will of the Abrahamic god, yet concedes that everyone will, sooner or later (usually sooner) will fall short of that. And I know a number of Christians for whom this makes perfect sense. Although, there are those who claim the moral law is to aspire to a life without sin; but now we're starting to get into the weeds.) In any event, the formulation of "ought implies can" is a common one because it avoids the trap of a moral imperative to do the impossible.

In practice, however, there is a problem, and that problem can be summed up with a slight change to the formula: "ought implies a belief that one can." Or, to paraphrase Immanuel Kant more completely: For if the moral law commands that we ought to be better human beings now, it inescapably follows that we must believe ourselves be capable of being better human beings. While people do surprise themselves with their ability to do what they'd believed impossible, the tendency of reality to mold itself to perceptions is not to be underestimated.

Which is why I tend to look askance at the stereotypical conservative exhortation to "hard work" as the answer to everything. To wit:

Nevertheless, there have always been Black conservatives who embrace an anti-racialist perspective. For example, when asked if Black Americans should work their way up without special favors the same way the Irish, Italians, and Jews did, a statement that would be considered beyond the pale in many elite media and academic institutions, the 2020 American National Election Survey found that about 20 percent of Black respondents agreed or strongly agreed with that statement; another 20 percent said they neither agreed nor disagreed.
Reihan Salam "America Needs Anti-Racialism"

Which is all fine and good, but what about the remaining 60 percent? It's one thing to tell them that "they should work their way up." (As an aside, this a statement that ignores the reality of social ordering, Not everyone can "work their way up" in a society that exhibits any sort of inequality, because any ranking of some number of people is, by necessity, zero-sum, in order for someone to rise from 100th place to 50th place, someone else {or several someones} must see their rankings decline.) It's another thing for them to believe that it's possible.

It's also another thing for people to believe that an apples-to-apples comparison is being made. I'm not sure when one would say that the Black population of the United States was in the same situation as the Irish, Italians or Jews. Mainly because any such date would be a fairly arbitrary comparison of two very different points in history. What point in Black history lines up with the situation of the Irish in 1850? Certainly not 1850; the Irish weren't legally subject to hereditary involuntary labor at that time, or considered less than a full human being for determining the voting population. There may be a time when there was an equivalent of Jim Crow for the Irish, but the lack of widespread coding into law means that there isn't a date of the repeal of those laws that one can point to.

The Black population of the United States tends to skew liberal because they understand themselves to be at a disadvantage relative to White Americans. Sure, the formal legal structures and widely-understood social mores that openly acted in them are largely gone, but that's not really the same thing as saying that the old preferences and prejudices have completely faded away.

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.

Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.

This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.
Lyndon Johnson, Howard University Commencement Address (1965)

Where I think that the conservative understanding of freedom of competition falls short is in the belief that a sufficiently motivated person has no need of coaches. Sure, there are many self-taught runners, some who are remarkably good at it. That doesn't make them the rule. They're simply more visible than those who gave up the sport due to injury or the simple realization that they'd never be able to win against people with more formal training.

And a good coach doesn't just push someone to perform to a certain level. They start with making sure that their charge has an understanding that they're capable of doing it. (Of course, this leaves aside those coaches who operate by daring their students to prove them wrong when they say they'll never amount to anything, but they are the exception.)

Coaching, mentoring and support should not be seen as a "special favor." It's what gives people the understanding that they can take risks. Which is important in a nation that has had such a visible history of punishing those who attempted to "rise above their station" and/or stealing the proceeds of those who succeeded.

Hard work, in and of itself, has never been a ticket to success. After all, the slaves worked very hard. There was very little in the way of a payoff for them. And this wasn't because of strangely racially-specific bad luck; it was nationwide policy. Policies that persisted even after emancipation. If conservatives really want to combat anti-racism with anti-racialism, they're going to have to demonstrate that they're invested in the success of everyone around them, not just those people whose exploits appeal to their sense of ideology. It's not enough to tell people that they "should work their way up." There has to be a message that they can, and that it's important to people that they do so.