Slavery’s defenders kept using false census ‘proof’ even knowing it was untrue.

Evidence

Bolstered by Gliddon’s “facts,” Calhoun defended American domestic policy before antislavery Europe. The “facts” of the 1840 census were never corrected—and slavery’s apologists never stopped wielding its “unquestionable” proof of slavery’s positive good. They continued to assert that slavery brought racial progress—almost certainly knowing that this proof was untrue. “It is too good a thing for our politicians to give [up],” a Georgia congressman reportedly confessed. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 485

Categorization

• XREF: This is the crux of Kendi’s inversion: rationalization persists consciously, not from ignorance — directly addresses the reader’s discomfort that ignorance causes hate/causes discrimination. The ‘too good a thing’ quote is the textbook counterexample to the ignorance model.
• SEED: Possible essay: ‘Policy first, proof after’ — mining this chapter’s census-bombshell example as the cleanest case of knowingly false ‘science’ generated to justify pre-existing policy.