



In short, he concluded, "colored men have themselves oftenest to blame." (For what? He doesn't say.)Ĭode Switch Racial Disparities In Wages Boil Down To Discrimination Fortune, a black economist himself, argued that black men enjoy "exceptional opportunities," like public libraries and free night schools, but were too "ignorant" to take advantage of them.
#HUSTL AND CO HOW TO#
"The average colored man does not know how to hustle," Timothy Thomas Fortune wrote for The Southwestern Christian Advocate, a Methodist African American newspaper, in 1888. In other publications, hustle-or a lack thereof-was invoked to make an association between blackness and laziness. An 1894 article from The Los Angeles Times recounted how a young woman was sex trafficked and "told that she must 'hustle' for herself." A 1935 article from The Baltimore Afro-American said that by promising a nonexistent scholarship, "the president was admitting that he was giving the applicant a 'hustle.'" According to the Oxford English Dictionary, hustle comes from the Dutch word "husselen," meaning "to shake or toss." Over time, the word expanded, meaning "to hurry" and "to obtain by begging."īy the late 19th and early 20th century, hustle started being used to mean "gumption" or "hard work." A 1914 job ad from The Chicago Defender, an African American newspaper, said delivering the paper was an "easy task" for "any wide-awake boy with a little hustle in him." A year later, the paper profiled Little Arthur White, a 12-year-old "newsy" who was "encouraged to hustle and work in early age."Īround the same time, hustle also referred to illegal activities - sex work, stealing and common scams.
