Assimilationists opposed Black self-determination by insisting Blacks needed white contact to be civilized

Evidence

And yet, for so many racist Americans, it was inconceivable that Black people had not been damaged by slavery: that Black people could dance into freedom without skipping a beat. General John C. Robinson worried about landowning “sluggish” Blacks preventing “the energy and industry of the North” from utilizing the valuable acreage. Assimilationists Frederick Douglass and Horace Greeley rebuked Sherman’s order, calling for interracial communities and ignoring the desires of local Blacks. Greeley wrote in his New York Tribune on January 30, 1865, that southern Blacks, “like their fellows at the North,” must be “aided by contact with white civilization to become good citizens and enlightened men.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 619

Categorization

• DEFINE: Cleanly illustrates the assimilationist position in Kendi’s three-way scheme: the belief that Black people require contact with (and imitation of) white civilization to progress.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s goal of placing arguments into segregationist/assimilationist/antiracist boxes — this is the assimilationist stance rejecting Sherman’s land grant in favor of interracial contact.