Assimilationism is a racist stance despite affirming biological racial equality

Evidence

And yet so many prominent Americans, many of whom we celebrate for their progressive ideas and activism, many of whom had very good intentions, subscribed to assimilationist thinking that also served up racist beliefs about Black inferiority. We have remembered assimilationists’ glorious struggle against racial discrimination, and tucked away their inglorious partial blaming of inferior Black behavior for racial disparities. In embracing biological racial equality, assimilationists point to environment—hot climates, discrimination, culture, and poverty—as the creators of inferior Black behaviors. For solutions, they maintain that the ugly Black stamp can be erased—that inferior Black behaviors can be developed, given the proper environment. As such, assimilationists constantly encourage Black adoption of White cultural traits and/or physical ideals. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 15

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This is the reader’s identified core discomfort — the claim that well-meaning progressive assimilationism is itself racist — and Kendi argues it with precision here.
• DEFINE: Defines assimilationism as a distinct kind of racist idea: environmental rather than biological inferiority claims.
• XREF: connects to: Nineteenth-century racial Anglo-Saxonism coexisted with assimilationist cosmopolitanism — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 199; Assimilationist anti-racism both erased black-white difference and homogenized black peoples — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1189; Assimilation theory fails to predict Iranian Americans’ exclusion from whiteness — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 63 (+2 more)