White assimilationist allies expected Black humility rather than assertiveness

Evidence

At the NAACP, Du Bois butted heads with Oswald Garrison Villard, who along with Du Bois was one of the co-founders of the new organization. Like his grandfather, Villard was more of an assimilationist than an antiracist, and he looked upon Black people as social problems. Then again, while his grandfather had loved aggressive antiracist Blacks, such as early Black feminist Maria Stewart, Villard “naturally expected” African Americans “to be humble and thankful or certainly not assertive and aggressive,” Du Bois accurately noted. For instance, Villard tried, unsuccessfully, to push Ida B. Wells-Barnett out of the Committee of Forty, which had been responsible for organizing the NAACP. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 791

Categorization

• DEFINE: Perfect worked example of Kendi’s assimilationist category: even the grandson of Garrison, an ally by heritage, expected Blacks to be ‘humble and thankful’ — showing assimilationism lives inside allies, not just opponents.
• XREF: Villard is a case study for the reader’s key discomfort — that assimilationism is where most well-meaning people live, directly applicable to placing any ally’s argument into the three-way scheme. — connects to: Moralistic norms aligned black women with Progressive-era assimilationism — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 908