Woolman argued slavery itself fixed national ideas of Black inferiority, not the reverse.

Evidence

“Placing on Men the ignominious Title SLAVE, dressing them in uncomely Garments, keeping them to servile Labour … tends gradually to fix a Nation in the mind, that they are a Sort of People below us in Nature,” stated Woolman. But Whites should not connect slavery “with the Black Colour, and Liberty with the White,” because “where false Ideas are twisted into our Minds, it is with Difficulty we get fair disentangled.” In matters of right and equity, “the Colour of a Man avails nothing.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 225

Categorization

• DEFINE: Woolman’s position that slavery SLAVE-labels a people as inferior is a direct predecessor of Kendi’s policy-before-ideas causal claim.
• DEEPTHINKING: Woolman articulates in 1762 exactly the causal inversion Kendi builds a book around — that the institution of slavery manufactures the appearance of Black inferiority, rather than inferiority justifying slavery. Dense because it also answers the reader’s test case (ideas seeming to precede policy): even here the policy form (slavery labeling a people) is causally prior.