The strategy of uplift suasion rested on a racist idea itself.

Evidence

This strategy of what can be termed uplift suasion was based on the idea that White people could be persuaded away from their racist ideas if they saw Black people improving their behavior, uplifting themselves from their low station in American society. The burden of race relations was placed squarely on the shoulders of Black Americans. Positive Black behavior, abolitionist strategists held, undermined racist ideas, and negative Black behavior confirmed them. … This strategy to undermine racist ideas was actually based on a racist idea: “negative” Black behavior, said that idea, was partially or totally responsible for the existence and persistence of racist ideas. To believe that the negative ways of Black people were responsible for racist ideas was to believe that there was some truth in notions of Black inferiority. To believe that there was some truth in notions of Black inferiority was to hold racist ideas. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 327

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines uplift suasion and its ironic self-refuting structure.
• DEEPTHINKING: The nested syllogism — that a strategy to fight racism is itself built on a racist premise — is the kind of inversion a reader would sit with, and it shows Kendi’s method at its sharpest.