Racist framing trapped enslaved Africans in a no-win logic where all acts confirmed inferiority

Evidence

No matter what African people did, they were barbaric beasts or brutalized like beasts. If they did not clamor for freedom, then their obedience showed they were naturally beasts of burden. If they nonviolently resisted enslavement, they were brutalized. If they killed for their freedom, they were barbaric murderers. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 176

Categorization

• XREF: Directly instantiates Kendi’s core inversion: the policy (slavery) precedes and locks in the ideas, which are unfalsifiable — whatever enslaved people do is read as proof of inferiority.
• DEEPTHINKING: This is the logical structure of unfalsifiable racist justification itself — a closed interpretive system that converts every possible Black action into confirming evidence. It is the interpretive engine at the heart of Kendi’s whole argument.