Gregoire refuted Jefferson using assimilationist framing that still placed Blacks below Whites.

Evidence

Weeks before leaving office, Jefferson thanked abolitionist and scientist Henri Gregoire for sending him a copy of An Enquiry Concerning the Intellectual and Moral Faculties, and Literature of Negroes on February 25. Gregoire offered travel “testimony” of glorious Black nations to refute what “Jefferson tells us, that no nation of them was ever civilized,” he wrote. “We do not pretend to place the negroes on a level” with Whites, Gregoire explained in assimilationist form, but only to challenge those who say “that the negroes are incapable of becoming partners in the store-house of human knowledge.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 358

Categorization

• DEFINE: Kendi explicitly labels Gregoire’s argument “assimilationist form” — a working example of the three-way scheme: Gregoire challenges polygenesis while still conceding White superiority.
• XREF: This is a concrete case for the reader’s project of placing arguments into segregationist/assimilationist/antiracist boxes — Gregoire models assimilationism precisely: reject inferiority claims while affirming hierarchy.