Uplift suasion backfires and actually drives progression of racism

Evidence

The history of racist ideas shows not only that uplift suasion has failed, but that, generally speaking, the opposite of its intended effect has occurred. Racist Americans have routinely despised those Black Americans the most who uplifted themselves, who defied those racist laws and theories that individuals employed to keep them down. So upwardly mobile Black folk have not persuaded away racist ideas or policies. Quite the contrary. Uplift suasion has brought on the progression of racism—new racist policies and ideas after Blacks broke through the old ones. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1245

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: the ‘model minority’ and respectability politics as a self-defeating strategy that invites backlash — evidence that aspirational conduct provokes rather than disarms racists.
• QUESTION: Is the claimed inverse causal relationship (uplift provokes backlash) robust, or does it conflate correlation with causation? The Obama case is a natural test.