Even anti-segregationist scholars framed Black inferiority as caused by lost culture.

Evidence

Boas echoed the old creed of assimilationists in The Mind of Primitive Man: rejection of the segregationist “theory of hereditary inferiority” and belief that the “complete loss” of African cultures and the pressures of slavery and discrimination had made Black people inferior. “In short, there is every reason to believe that the negro when given facility and opportunity, will be perfectly able to fulfill the duties of citizenship as well as his white neighbor,” Boas wrote. “It may be that he will not produce as many great men as the white race, and that his average achievement will not quite reach the level of the average achievement of the white race; but there will be endless numbers who will be able to outrun their white competitors.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 794

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concrete specimen of assimilationist logic: rejecting hereditary inferiority while still locating deficiency in Black people themselves.
• XREF: Embodies exactly the assimilationist position the reader wants to recognize and place; parallels contemporary ‘achievement gap’ discourse.