Racist ideas were insulated from counterevidence even in 1874.

Evidence

Nothing seemed to dent racist ideas, not even upwardly mobile urban Blacks. In 1874, Nashville’s White-owned Republican Banner praised the “thrifty and cleanly” Blacks. But they could not “be taken as the representative of the indolent and shiftless hundreds of thousands,” the Banner opined. They were extraordinary. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 679

Categorization

• XREF: This is exactly the ‘exceptional Black’ structure Kendi describes as assimilationist — fits his taxonomy precisely and echoes contemporary ‘model minority’ reasoning.