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The “Southern Strategy”
“Uplift suasion” is the assimilationist racist idea that Black people should act “respectable”—or imitate middle-class white people—in order to show white people that they’re human and convince the government to give them equal rights.
Uplift Suasion Quotes in Stamped
The Stamped quotes below are all either spoken by Uplift Suasion or refer to Uplift Suasion. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 9 Quotes
[Uplift suasion] would be the cornerstone of assimilationist thought, which basically said:
Make yourself small,
make yourself unthreatening,
make yourself the same,
make yourself safe,
make yourself quiet,
to make White people comfortable with your existence.
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Throughout U.S. history, activists and race leaders have long told Black people to change their behavior in the hopes of convincing white people to back racial equality. This assimilationist theory is called uplift suasion: if Black people lift themselves up socially and economically—meaning they start to imitate and work with white people—then they will persuade white people to abandon racist ideas and change racist policies. But uplift suasion has never worked, even in the capable hands of leaders like Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. This is because appealing to powerful white people’s good will and disproving Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti sol
Chapter 19 Quotes
But not everyone was kissing Du Bois’s assimilationist feet. There was a resistant group of artists that emerged in 1926 who called themselves the Niggerati. They believed they should be able to make whatever they wanted to express themselves as whole humans without worrying about White acceptance. […] They wanted to function the same way as the blues women, like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, who sang about pain and sex and whatever else they wanted to. Even if the images of Blackness weren’t always positive. W. E. B. Du Bois and his supporters of uplift suasion and media suasion had a hard time accepting any narrative of Black people being less than perfect. Less than dignified. But the Niggerati were arguing that, if Black people couldn’t be shown as imperfect, they couldn’t be shown as human.
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In the 1920s, W. E. B. Du Bois started to feud with a group of antiracist Harlem Renaissance artists, who didn’t want to soften their tone or weaken their ideas in order to appease white people. This conflict clearly represents the basic differences between assimilationism and antiracism identified by Reynolds and Kendi: assimilationists work, act, and write for a white audience; antiracists do so for their own racial group. The Harlem Renaissance artists believed they had a right to freely and authentically express themselves, as much as any white artist did, and they saw Du Bois’s narrow expectations as limits Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debit
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Uplift Suasion Term Timeline in Stamped
The timeline below shows where the term Uplift Suasion appears in Stamped. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 9: Uplift Suasion
...that this would disprove stereotypes and make other white people more comfortable. But this “ uplift suasion ” theory is racist. White people should accept Black people the way they are, instead...
(full context)
Chapter 11: Mass Communication for Mass Emancipation
...immediate end to slavery. But at first, Garrison didn’t believe in immediate equality—he believed in uplift suasion . He changed his mind after the enslaved preacher Nat Turner launched a rebellion in...
(full context)
Chapter 19: Can’t Sing and Dance and Write It Away
When the NAACP’s new leaders pushed even harder for uplift suasion , Du Bois finally decided to quit. He started teaching at Atlanta University and advocating...
(full context)
