White men’s interracial desire was often framed through assimilationist ideas.

Evidence

SOME WHITE MEN were honest enough to broadcast their attractions, usually justifying them with assimilationist ideas. Royalist Richard Ligon, exiled from parliamentary England in Barbados, sat at a dinner adoring the “black Mistress” of the colony’s governor. Barbados had become richer than all the other British colonies combined by the mid-1600s. Sugar was planted right up to the steps of homes, and the residents ate New England food instead of growing their own. To Ligon, the Black mistress had “the greatest beauty and majesty together: that ever I saw in one woman,” exceeding Queen Anne of Denmark. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 104

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows that assimilationism — not just strict segregationism — already served to rationalize racist order in the colonial era, anticipating Kendi’s later point that most well-meaning people occupy this position.