Cotton Mather produced the assimilationist idea that Africans could become White in their souls.

Evidence

Cotton Mather had indeed overtaken the names of his grandfathers, two ministerial giants bred in an intellectual world debating whether Africa’s heat or Ham’s curse had produced the ugly apelike African beasts who were benefiting from enslavement. If his grandfathers consumed in England the racist idea of the African who can and should be enslaved, then Cotton Mather led the way in producing the racist idea of Christianity simultaneously subduing and uplifting the enslaved African. … By the time of Mather’s death in 1728, Royal Society fellows had fully constructed this White ruling standard for humanity. Christianity, rationality, civilization, wealth, goodness, souls, beauty, light, Adam, Jesus, God, and freedom had all been framed as the dominion of White people from Europe. The only question was whether lowly African people had the capacity of rising up and reaching the standard. As America’s first great assimilationist, Cotton Mather preached that African people could become White in their souls. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 194

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explicitly labels Mather ‘America’s first great assimilationist’ and defines the assimilationist position as believing subordinate people can rise to meet the White standard.
• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s stated goal: placing an argument into Kendi’s three-way scheme. This is the archetypal assimilationist moment.