Desegregation primarily benefited Black elites, not poor Black communities

Evidence

King made his way out of the good graces of assimilationist America that year. Assimilationists still wanted to keep him in the doubly conscious dreams of 1963, just as they had wanted to keep Du Bois in the doubly conscious souls of 1903. But King no longer saw any real strategic utility for the persuasion techniques that assimilationists adored, or for the desegregation efforts they championed. He now realized that desegregation had primarily benefited Black elites, leaving millions wallowing in the wrenching poverty that had led to their urban rebellions. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1008

Categorization

• XREF: Directly challenges the assimilationist framing Kendi dissects throughout; connects to the book’s central inversion that policy (desegregation) served self-interest, not ideas. — connects to: Black elite status depended on the welfare of the whole black population
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: this claim (desegregation mainly helped Black elites) is a strong empirical test case — did desegregation have measurable elite-skewed benefits?