Assimilationists produced the racist idea of unenlightened Africa as a gift of American light.

Evidence

In 1767, the fifteen-year-old composed “To the University of Cambridge,” a poem that signified her longing to enter the all-White, all-male Harvard. She had already consumed the assimilationist ideas about her race that had probably been fed to her by the Wheatley family, saying, for instance, “’Twas but e’en now I left my native Shore / The sable Land of error’s darkest night.” Assimilationists were producing the racist idea of unenlightened Africa, and telling Wheatley and other Blacks that the light of America was a gift. The next year, Wheatley continued to marvel in her assimilation—and attack segregationist curse theory—in the poem, “On Being Brought from Africa to America.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 236

Categorization

• XREF: Core to reader’s mastery goal: here Kendi shows assimilationists generating the racist idea of unenlightened Africa — exactly the policy-then-idea inversion, applied within the assimilationist track.
• DEFINE: Illustrates the assimilationist position: the racist idea that Africa is benighted and American light is a gift, distinct from segregationist curse theory.