Even antislavery Lincoln publicly endorsed white racial superiority to win votes

Evidence

“I am not nor ever have been in favor of making [Black people] voters or jurors,” or politicians or marriage partners, Lincoln insisted. “There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 545

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s goal of placing arguments into Kendi’s three-way scheme: Lincoln’s position here is assimilationist — opposing slavery while accepting permanent racial hierarchy.
• DEEPTHINKING: The uncomfortable reality that the Great Emancipator’s antislavery stance was built on a fully articulated white-supremacist foundation — that opposition to slavery and endorsement of racial hierarchy coexisted in the same speech — is a paradigm-challenging case for any clean moral framing of Lincoln.