  A better gloss is to take the Second Disfranchisement Premise as an analysis of the First: it is not merely that blacks are psychologically harmed by their disfranchised status, but that they understand their psychological response to political marginality as a moral wrong. Hence they respond not merely to the fact of their political weakness, but also to the denial it represents of their moral character and efficacy qua moral. This route is more robust, since it recognizes in blacks a complex moral interpretation of the harm they are suffering, which presupposes the condition the earlier rendering could only stipulate. That presupposition is virtuous, though, since the psychological facts in question are verifiable, and if they hold, they directly establish the moral status in question. Moreover, paternalism is forestalled, since a moral judgment by blacks of their own condition counts as prima facie evidence that they are moral agents capable of such judgments.