Ethnicity theorists read the civil rights movement as a push for black assimilation

Evidence

At that time ethnicity theory was grappling with black attempts to achieve equality through the civil rights movement. As seen through the lens of ethnicity, the civil rights movement was a drive for black integration and for the removal of any remaining forms of institutional/legal discrimination. From the perspective of writers such as Glazer and Moynihan or Milton Gordon (1964), civil rights demands were intelligible and comprehensible within the ethnicity framework, and thus deserving of support. The civil rights movement was trying to create for blacks the same conditions that white ethnics had found: “opportunity” and relative equality, the absence of formal discriminatory barriers, however much attitudinal prejudice may have existed (Glazer 1987 , 25-27). — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 51

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to how other vault race-theory sources frame social scientists’ interpretation of civil rights; corroborating historical backdrop for racial-formation arguments. — connects to: Post-civil-rights reform failure forced ethnicity theory toward blaming people of color — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 55; Assimilation theory cannot explain the permanent exclusion of Blacks from mainstream America — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 377; Assimilationist progress narratives deliberately sidestep present racial reality — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 923 (+3 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Post-civil-rights reform failure forced ethnicity theory toward blaming people of color — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 55; Assimilation theory cannot explain the permanent exclusion of Blacks from mainstream America — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 377; Assimilationist progress narratives deliberately sidestep present racial reality — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 923 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Assimilation theory cannot explain the permanent exclusion of Blacks from mainstream America #complicates (0.82) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 377
• Racial bodies operate as tools for domination and resistance that ethnicity theory ignores #complicates (0.80) — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 54
• Assimilationist progress narratives deliberately sidestep present racial reality #complicates (0.75) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 923