Self-respecting Black demands for immediate equality terrified mainstream white Americans.

Evidence

At least President Wilson was being honest. He feared that the relatively good treatment Black soldiers had received in France had “gone to their heads.” To Wilson’s racist Americans, there was nothing more dangerous than a self-respecting Black person with antiracist expectations of immediate equality, rather than the gradual equality of assimilationists or the permanent inequality of segregationists. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 818

Categorization

• XREF: Wilson’s fear is an inversion of the commonplace ‘they only want gradual progress’ patience — showing how antiracist immediacy is itself seen as dangerous. — connects to: Working-class people desire welfare-state measures while fearing equality itself. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 2139