Separatism and integration are each morally neutral forms and only racist by intent

Evidence

Assimilationists often erroneously confused Garvey’s separatists, who actually believed in separate but equal, with segregationists, who really believed in separate but unequal. It was Garvey’s assimilationist opponents who were constructing Black integration into White spaces as progress. And these assimilationists also were conjoining Garvey’s separatist efforts of racial solidarity with segregationist efforts to maintain the racial exclusion of inferior peoples. Garvey’s assimilationist opponents failed to realize that there was nothing inherently tolerant or intolerant about Americans voluntarily separating themselves or integrating themselves. Americans routinely did separate and integrate themselves, voluntarily, based on religion, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, profession, class, race, and social interests. Separatist organizing can be racist (and when it is, it turns into segregation), if the emphasis is on excluding inferior peoples. Interracial organizing can be racist (and when it is, it turns into assimilation), if the emphasis is on elevating inferior Blacks by putting them under the auspices of superior Whites. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 832

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharply distinguishes separatist from segregationist and redefines what makes any organizing racist — the intent to exclude or to elevate-under-superiority, not the form (separate vs. integrated). Core to the reader’s goal of categorizing positions.
• QUESTION: Kendi’s criterion (intent to exclude/elevate-under) makes raciness a matter of motive — how does he locate intent for actors who sincerely deny it? Worth chasing in later chapters.
• XREF: This is the precise three-way scheme the reader wants to apply externally: Garvey’s separate-but-equal is antiracist/nonracist separatism, his integrationist critics are assimilationists, and white supremacists are segregationists.
• DEEPTHINKING: Voluntary self-separation based on religion, class, sexuality etc. is normal human sociality — Kendi removes the moral weight from the form of organizing and places it entirely on the underlying assumption about equality vs. inferiority, a genuinely non-binary frame.