Abolitionist proponents of equal rights still believed Blacks were inferior

Evidence

In promoting equal rights, McKaye and the other two commissioners, Indiana reformer Robert Dale Owen and New England abolitionist Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, never entertained the idea that Blacks and Whites were truly equal. They had been charged with answering questions regarding the “condition and capacity” of Blacks for freedom and free labor, a task whose real aim was assuaging Whites who feared the effects of emancipation. Are Blacks naturally lazy? Would Blacks invade and ruin the North? Could Black labor be more profitable in freedom than in slavery? In his AFIC report on runaways in Canada, Howe forecasted that Blacks “will co-operate powerfully with whites from the North in re-organizing the industry of the South.” However, “they will dwindle,” this Social Darwinist made sure to note, “and gradually disappear from the peoples of this continent.” Commissioner Owen eased fearful northerners’ anxieties by speaking more to the potential contributions of African Americans in AFIC’s final report. Their “softening influence,” drawn from their “womanly” disposition, would one day improve the hardened “national character.” The Anglo-Saxon “head predominates over the heart,” he wrote. “The African race is in many respects the reverse of this.” A decade after Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, abolitionists still viewed Black people through its racist lens. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 609

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is a perfect example of assimilationist racism as Kendi defines it — equal-rights advocacy resting on a claim of inherent Black deficiency (womanly softness, Anglo-Saxon head versus African heart).
• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s stated difficulty: placing well-meaning equal-rights advocacy (assimilationist) in Kendi’s three-way scheme — this is a canonical textbook specimen. — connects to: Believing blacks were animal-like masked the contradiction of slavery with equality. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1167; Abolitionists against slavery could still defend segregation and white supremacy — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 260; White abolitionist films erase black agency and depict slaves as passive recipients of emancipation — Tavengwa Gwekwerere, Davie E. Mutasa, and Kudakwashe Chitofiri, Settlers, Rhodesians, and Supremacists:…, 53
• QUESTION: The racial ‘softening influence’ / ‘womanly disposition’ framing combines gender and race hierarchies — worth interrogating how Kendi maps Emersonian/Northern romantic racialism onto his scheme.
• DEEPTHINKING: The passage as a whole — equal-rights reformers who never entertained equality, landing a Social Darwinist extinction forecast inside a pro-emancipation report — is a dense, paradigm-shifting exhibit for the assimilationist category.