"When McWhorter confines regret and shame about this joblessness to the past, he implies that all that's left in today's black men is shamelessness. This, I think, comes perilously close to evoking a gilded narrative of master-servant nostalgia: How we miss the good old days when "those people" (and it has been said of the Irish, Germans, peasants, etc.) were all hardworking and happy and grateful. But "now," sigh, they're all so uppity that you can't find one who wants to do windows."