Assimilationist progress narratives deliberately sidestep present racial reality

Evidence

In fact, there was scarcely a community in the early 1950s where prejudice was not fueling cruelly unjust White campaigns against open housing, desegregated education, equal job opportunities, and civil rights. The Negro in American Life displayed pictures of a desegregated classroom and community that few Americans would have recognized, while admitting “much remains to be done.” The pamphlet asked, given how bad things were, is it not amazing how far we’ve come? With every civil rights victory and failure, this line of reasoning became the standard past-future declaration of assimilationists: we have come a long way, and we have a ways to go. They purposefully sidestepped the present reality of racism. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 923

Categorization

• XREF: Direct evidence for the reader’s goal: the pragmatic ‘we have come a long way, we have a ways to go’ move is identified as a deliberate sidestep, useful for placing any external argument into Kendi’s scheme.