White charges of Black incompetency followed the stripping of Black political power

Evidence

ON JANUARY 29, 1901, the lone Black representative, George H. White of North Carolina, gave his farewell address to Congress. About 90 percent of the nation’s Black people resided in the South, but they were no longer represented by Black politicians in the state legislatures and in Congress. Their mass disenfranchisement, and charges of incompetency leveled against Black politicians by White ones, had made sure of that. “This, Mr. Chairman, is perhaps the negroes’ temporary farewell to the American Congress,” said White, “but let me say, Phoenix-like he will rise up someday and come again.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 753

Categorization

• QUESTION: Kendi’s inversion: disenfranchisement (policy) preceded the incompetency charges (ideas), not the reverse. Useful test case for the reader’s stated goal of placing arguments in his scheme.
• XREF: Directly tests the reader’s key question: whether ideas precede policy. Here the policy (disenfranchisement) came first, with the incompetency claims following to justify it. — connects to: Confederate monument construction spikes track eras of white political reassertion. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 342; Municipal neglect caused the decay whites blamed on black residents — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 180; Naming and airing black grievances disarmed black political challenges to Hartsfield. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 97