Postracialists reward Black uplift rhetoric and punish Black critique of White discrimination

Evidence

During the NAACP speech, Obama lectured about African Americans needing a “new mind-set, a new set of attitudes,” to free themselves from their “internalized sense of limitation,” and rebuked Black parents for contracting out parenting. For this litany of rebukes of millions of Black people, Glenn Beck and the postracialists did not offer a critical word. Apparently, it was fine for Obama to critique millions of Black people. But as soon as he was critical of a single White discriminator, the postracialists pounced. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1232

Categorization

• XREF: This is assimilationism in action — Black self-improvement talk (‘new mind-set, new attitudes’) is the acceptable lane, antiracist naming of discrimination is not; connects to the reader’s goal of placing any argument in the three-way scheme. — connects to: Segregationist preachers patronized Black audiences while demanding gratitude for past white charity — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 248; Showcasing accomplished black speakers countered racist deficit narratives and raised aspirations — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 776
• SEED: Angle: the asymmetry of acceptable antiracist speech — a test for where a speaker actually sits in Kendi’s scheme is not what they say about Black people but how they react when a White discriminator is named.