Assimilationist social science blamed Black culture and family for racial inequality.

Evidence

Beyond the Melting Pot propagated a ladder of ethnic racism—that is, a hierarchy of ethnic groups within the racial hierarchy—situating the hard-working and intelligent Jews over the Irish, Italians, and Puerto Ricans, and West Indian migrants over the “Southern Negro” because of West Indians’ emphasis on “saving, hard work, investment, [and] education.” … As an assimilationist, Glazer, citing Frazier, attributed the problems to both discrimination and Black inferiority, particularly the “weak” Black family, the “most serious heritage” of slavery. … And from historical racism and class racism, he turned to cultural racism and political racism to explain why problems persisted in the Black community. “The Negro,” he said, “is only an American, and nothing else. He has no values and culture to guard and protect.” … He criticized the Negro for insisting “that the white world deal with his problems because, he is so much the product of America.” In Glazer’s vivid imagination, the Negro insisted that “they are not his problems, but everyone’s.” And this, he said, was “the key to much in the Negro world,” that Blacks were not taking enough responsibility for their own problems. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 950

Categorization

• DEFINE: Demonstrates the assimilationist position in the flesh: locate racial problems in Black culture, family, and self-responsibility rather than in discriminatory policy — exactly the three-way scheme’s second category.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s stated discomfort: this is where most well-meaning people live (self-help, self-examination, Black middle-class responsibility) — Kendi’s proof that assimilationism is a racist position, not a neutral one.
• SEED: Angle: how the phrase ‘only an American, and nothing else’ — stripping Black people of their own culture while blaming them for not having one — is the rhetorical trap at the heart of assimilationism.