Mid-century psychology claimed oppression wholly determined and wrecked Black personality

Evidence

Lawmakers responded, rather inaccurately, that the “negroes born in this country are generally baptised and brought up in the Christian religion.” As for imported Africans, lawmakers announced, “the gross bestiality and rudeness of their manners, the variety and strangeness of their languages, and the weakness and shallowness of their minds, render it in a manner impossible to make any progress in their conversion.” For the much more difficult commercial tasks, planters overcame the “strange” languages and had no problem teaching these “shallow-minded rude beasts” in other matters. Planters of impossibilities suddenly became planters of possibilities when instructing imported Africans on the complexities of proslavery theory, racist ideas, tobacco production, skilled trades, domestic work, and plantation management. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 163 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Mid-century psychologists traced every Black trait to oppressive living conditions; Mid-century psychiatry held that oppression shaped every trait of Black personality; Revisionist historians refuted claims of Black collective psychopathology — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 617 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Mid-century psychologists traced every Black trait to oppressive living conditions #corroborates (0.98)
• Mid-century psychiatry held that oppression shaped every trait of Black personality #corroborates (0.98)
• Claims of Black mental incapacity dissolved whenever enslavers needed Black skills #complicates (0.72) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 163