The Talented Tenth simultaneously attacked caste and disciplined the black masses

Evidence

The text of Morehouse’s speech captures the liberal-conservative dialectic that informed the northern Baptists’ conception of the Talented Tenth. The Talented Tenth undermined the validity of racial caste, while it simultaneously functioned as a “conserving influence” with regard to the unskilled masses. Black women, especially as teachers and missionaries, facilitated class stability within the South, just as educators in northern public schools integrated and assimilated immigrants into the northern industrial order. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 209

Categorization

• DEFINE: Crystallizes the dual liberal-conservative logic of the Talented Tenth concept as the northern Baptists deployed it.
• XREF: Parallels the framing of education in A Mission to Civilize and the push-pull of assimilationist reform — educating a colonized/racialized group as both uplift and pacification. — connects to: Respectability politics blamed black victims for their own oppression — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 923; The educated tenth was explicitly justified as a brake on black rebellion; Du Bois’s Talented Tenth concept blended assimilationist civilizing and class racism — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 773 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Du Bois’s Talented Tenth concept blended assimilationist civilizing and class racism #expands (0.85) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 773
• The Talented Tenth believed media suasion could cure racism #expands (0.80) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 848