Mather framed slave obedience as salvation and rebellion as devilish Blackness

Evidence

Do not partake in evil and “make yourself infinitely Blacker than you are all ready,” Mather warned. By obeying, your “souls will be washed ‘White in the blood of the lamb.’” If you fail to be “orderly servants,” then you shall forever welter “under intolerable blows and wounds” from the Devil, “your overseer.” In sum, Mather offered enslaved Africans two options: righteous assimilated Whiteness and slavery to God and God’s minions, or segregated criminal Blackness and slavery to the Devil and the Devil’s minions. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 160

Categorization

• DEFINE: A textbook case of Kendi’s assimilationist/antiracist scheme: Mather offers the enslaved only two options — assimilate into Whiteness or be segregated as criminal Blackness.
• SEED: The ‘two doors, both with chains’ structure — assimilation into Whiteness vs. segregation into Blackness, both slavery — is a sharp lens for a piece on how seemingly opposing racist frames both serve the same hierarchy.