… is from page 179 of Maverick, Jason Riley’s excellent 2021 intellectual biography of the great Thomas Sowell:
Civil rights organizations wanted to raise money and stay relevant, and black politicians who ran as ethnic leaders wanted to win votes. Which meant they had a vested interest in framing black problems primarily as civil rights problems even when the evidence pointed to other factors.
DBx: Sowell’s 1984 book, the cover of which is pictured here, is a must-read on this topic.