Racist justifying ideas persist until the policy that requires them ends

Evidence

Still, neither Wheatley nor Benjamin Rush nor any Enlightenment abolitionist was able to alter the position of proslavery segregationists. So long as there was slavery, there would be racist ideas justifying it. And there was nothing Wheatley and Rush could do to stop the production of racist proslavery ideas other than end slavery. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 256

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This is the purest statement in the chapter of Kendi’s central inversion — policy first, ideas follow as rationalization — with its sharp corollary that only ending the policy can end the ideas.
• XREF: Directly states the causal inversion the reader’s whole study is built around; also dovetails with the essay on sacrifice, where ritual practice likewise generated its own legitimating ideology.