Assimilation theory cannot explain the permanent exclusion of Blacks from mainstream America

Evidence

Critical race scholars, however, argue that the melting pot narrative is a myth. Entrenched White supremacy systemically coerces immigrants, enslaved peoples, and occupied peoples to abandon their cultures and replace them with the dominant culture of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. Rejecting racism as merely a social problem caused by individual prejudices, sociologist Joe Feagin proffers the White Racial Frame as “a broad and persisting set of racial stereotypes, prejudices, ideologies, interlinked interpretations and narratives, and visual images” that establishes Whites’ in-group superiority and non-Whites’ out-group inferiority as the foundation of American politics, economics, and social relations. For this reason, assimilation theory is unable to explain the permanent exclusion of Blacks from “mainstream” America, despite their presence for two centuries and the absence of ethnic or linguistic ties with the African nations from which they were abducted. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 377

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the White Racial Frame as a systemic, structural understanding of racism rather than individual prejudice.
• QUESTION: The claim that Blacks’ two centuries and lack of ethnic/linguistic ties make their exclusion inexplicable by assimilation theory is intriguing — worth testing against assimilation theory’s actual explanatory scope.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 377
• XREF: connects to: Pre-twentieth-century American ethnic policy ran on either assimilationist faith or exclusion, never forced integration; Assimilation theory fails to predict Iranian Americans’ exclusion from whiteness — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 63