Racist ideas can assign spiritual superiority to mask intellectual inferiority claims

Evidence

The relations of Tom and Eva sit at the novel’s thematic center. Stowe created the double-character—the naturally Christian Tom/Eva—to highlight her conception of Blacks being more feminine, “docile, child-like and affectionate,” which allows Christianity to find a “more congenial atmosphere” in Black bodies. In a major proselytizing battle, Stowe pits the soulful Christian Black slave, Tom, against the mindful un-Christian White master, St. Clare. “Thou hast hid from the wise and prudent, and revealed unto babes,” Tom says in biblical style. Blacks were spiritually superior because of their intellectual inferiority, Stowe maintained. This spiritual superiority allowed Blacks to have soul. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 515

Categorization

• XREF: This is the assimilationist ‘Black spiritual superiority’ inversion — connects to the reader’s stated goal of placing arguments into Kendi’s three-way scheme; also resonates with the ADDENDUM on ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ in that both involve dominant groups projecting virtue/innocence onto the subordinated.
• DEFINE: Illustrates how Stowe’s ‘spiritual superiority because of intellectual inferiority’ is a textbook assimilationist move — one particular racist idea justifying itself by flattering the group it degrades.