Brown-era social science converted assimilation from progress into psychological regression

Evidence

And yet Frazier had overcome his cultural racism. The popular social science literature about the psychological effects of discrimination that molded the Brown decision had remolded Frazier’s old ideas of assimilation as psychological progress, and he now believed in assimilation as regression. No group of Black people held more firmly to assimilationist ideas, Frazier argued, than the Black bourgeoisie, who tried to “slough off everything … reminiscent of its Negro origin.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 934

Categorization

• XREF: Core to reader’s goal: Frazier’s reversal shows a scholar’s ideas shifting in response to a policy decision (Brown), echoing Kendi’s policy-before-ideas inversion. — connects to: Technological and social progress produces psychological regression and instinctual fixation.