Economic self-interest blocked publishing Wheatley despite proven Black capability.

Evidence

The Wheatleys were delighted. But even with this attestation in hand, no American publisher was willing to alienate slaveholding consumers by publishing her by now famous poems, which were entering the abolitionist literature of the Revolutionary era. Phillis Wheatley had auditioned and proven the capability of Black humanity to the assimilationist scions of Boston. But unlike the publishers, these men did not have much to lose. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 242

Categorization

• XREF: Direct confirmation of Kendi’s central inversion: publishers’ self-interest (fear of alienating slaveholding consumers) determined what got published — policy/practice before ideas. Strong evidence for the reader’s core test of policy-first.