Upwardly mobile Black people produce resentment as often as admiration among racists.

Evidence

Consumers of racist ideas sometimes changed their viewpoints when exposed to Black people defying stereotypes (and then sometimes changed back when exposed to someone confirming the stereotypes). Then again, upwardly mobile Blacks seemed as likely to produce resentment as admiration. “If you were well dressed they would insult you for that, and if you were ragged you would surely be insulted for being so,” one Black Rhode Island resident complained in his memoir in the early 1800s. It was the cruel illogic of racism. When Black people rose, racists either violently knocked them down or ignored them as extraordinary. When Black people were down, racists called it their natural or nurtured place, and denied any role in knocking them down in the first place. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 331

Categorization

• XREF: The double-bind (damned if you rise, damned if you fall) echoes the argument in chapter 1’s framing and connects to the modern ‘model minority’ myth.