Abolitionist antiracists argue whiteness must be wholly dismantled

Evidence

More paternalistically and brazenly than Garrison, the Tappan brothers instructed AASS agents to instill in free Blacks “the importance of domestic order, and the performance of relative duties in families; of correct habits; command of temper and courteous manners.” Their mission: uplift the inferior free Blacks to “an equality with whites.” And yet, AASS agents and supporters were cautioned not to adopt Black children, encourage interracial marriages, or excite “the people of color to assume airs.” Blacks were to assume “the true dignity of meekness” in order to win over their critics. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 469 (#complicates, via linked claim)

The irony of Sethe seeing Bodwin as schoolteacher, when she attacks him with an ice pick at the end of the novel, is nonetheless sharply pointed. While the Bodwins expose themselves to considerable risk in the service of their abolitionist beliefs, and they manage Sethe’s release from prison, they do not see or treat African Americans as equal to whites. — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited, 907 (#complicates, via linked claim)

In one novel, Stowe ingeniously achieved what Garrison had been trying to do for roughly two decades in article after article in The Liberator. For the cosmic shift to antislavery, Stowe did not ask Americans to change their deep-seated beliefs. She asked only for them to alter the implications, the meaning of their deep-seated beliefs. Stowe met Americans where they were: in the concreteness of racist ideas. She accepted the nationally accepted premise of the enslaver. Naturally docile and intellectually inferior Black people were disposed to their enslavement to White people—and, Stowe crucially tacked on—to God. Stowe inverted Cotton Mather and all those preachers after him who had spent years trying to convince planters that Christianity made Blacks better slaves. She claimed that since docile Blacks made the best slaves, they made the best Christians. Since domineering Whites made the worst slaves, they made the worst Christians. Stowe offered Christian salvation to White America through antislavery. In order to become better Christians, White people must constrain their domineering temperament and end the evil outgrowth of that temperament: slavery. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 513 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Radical race abolitionists argue partial reform is futile while whiteness persists — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 765; Abolitionism could succeed by keeping racist premises and only changing their implications — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 513; Paternalist abolitionists reproduced rather than abolished racial hierarchy — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 907 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Even radical abolitionists demanded Black meekness while banning interracial intimacy #complicates (0.82) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 469
• Paternalist abolitionists reproduced rather than abolished racial hierarchy #complicates (0.80) — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited, 907
• Abolitionism could succeed by keeping racist premises and only changing their implications #complicates (0.74) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 513