Calling antiracists ‘angry’ is a classic assimilationist rhetorical move

Evidence

It was a classic assimilationist retort: calling antiracists “angry” for truly believing in racial equality, for not seeing anything wrong with Black people, and for seeing everything wrong with discrimination when squarely facing the African American condition. Like W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr. before him, Obama lumped these “angry” antiracists with angry anti-White cynics to discredit them and distinguish himself from them. But when Du Bois and King ultimately arrived at antiracism, they had had to ward off the same “angry” and anti-White labels they had helped to produce. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1219

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharply defines the assimilationist rhetorical pattern of dismissing antiracists as ‘angry’ — precisely the scheme the reader wants to wield.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s standing interest in how well-meaning centrist positions function as racist — assimilationism as the comfortable default.
• SEED: Could support an essay on the ‘angry person of color’ dismissal as a transhistorical assimilationist tactic, from Du Bois and King to Obama.