Assimilationists treated Black people as exhibits proving Black capacity for Whiteness.

Evidence

PHILLIS WHEATLEY WAS not the first so-called “uncultivated Barbarian” to be examined and exhibited. Throughout the eighteenth century’s race for Enlightenment, assimilationists galloped around seeking out human experiments—“barbarians” to civilize into the “superior” ways of Europeans—to prove segregationists wrong, and sometimes to prove slaveholders wrong. As trained exotic creatures in the racist circus, Black people could showcase Black capacity for Whiteness, for human equality, for something other than slavery. They could show they were capable of freedom—someday. Few worked as passionately to provide this human evidence, or put up as much money to experiment, as John Montagu, England’s Second Duke of Montagu. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 243

Categorization

• XREF: The assimilationist ‘proving capacity’ project is the precursor of modern ‘Black excellence’ arguments; connects the reader’s scheme to present-day discourse. — connects to: Showcasing accomplished black speakers countered racist deficit narratives and raised aspirations — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 776
• SEED: Angle for an essay: the assimilationist ‘human experiment’ pattern — from the Duke of Montagu’s exhibit to modern model-minority framing — as a recurring, always-racist strategy of proving worth to whites on white terms.