The real roots of racism in America.

[Ed Suspicious]

I was reading Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States when it struck me that racism is a deliberate and actively used tool of moneyed elite as a bulwark against overwhelming numbers of downtrodden people banding together and rising up against inequality and oppression.

It seems inequality in colonial America was codified early and intentionally. John Locke designed The Carolina’s Fundamental Constitutions that held that only wealthiest of wealthy would rule an aristocracy, “in which eight barons would own 40 percent of the colony’s land, and only a baron could be governor.” Although the Fundamental Constitutions were never ratified they reinforced the idea of a gentrified elite who controlled the political narrative by act of law in that unicameral parliament would only debate items previously approved by the Lord’s Proprietors of England. Built into this document were the designations of serfs (leetmen) and slaves who served the Landgraves and the caciques who would hold at least 48000 acres and 24000 acres respectively.

So the whole system was designed to prop up the 1% on the backs the serfs and slaves. It left no realistic method for the lower classes to have their concerns addressed. This stratification along class divides was intentional and offered no mobility to the lower classes. The 1% however saw the black slave population in the middle 1700s grow to 23% of the 1.6 million population of the colonies. There was a real risk of rebellion based upon the sheer numbers of slaves, poor indentured whites, and Native American Indians. There seemed to be a palpable fear among the elites that the three groups would band together in rebellion against the brutality inherent in the system.

Reading that, it struck me that there seems to have been a very clear incentive to work hard to turn poor whites against black slaves and black slaves against Indians, It seems that racism is less a natural state of dislike between differing ethnicities, but a carefully cultivated division cynically built for the sole purpose of maintaining a feudalist power structure.

Racism is a tool that finds it’s main usage in preserving the sociopolitical advantage of the 1%. This is as true today as it was 450 years ago.

This is probably common knowledge to many, but the thought really struck me hard and made clear to me the methods of the rich who have no interest in peace or harmony, or perhaps even in divisiveness except insofar as either mode of society most readily protects their position of power and their wealth.

Racist republicans truly are the useful idiots of the uber-wealthy.

[Ed Suspicious]

1. Thought this might generate some sort of discussion even if it's just to say "you're wrong, idiot."

[quinnox]

2. Perhaps most who read it just agreed and had nothing to add

sometimes that happens with threads. I rec'd it for this reason.

[Ed Suspicious]

6. Thanks for the rec and the reply.

[Hoyt]

3. Maybe, but I think right wingers just take to racism too easily. They enjoy it.

[Ed Suspicious]

8. I think they must have found some social reward in racism. It's because it is so accepted and met

with approving glances and rounds of high fives in republican circles behind closed doors that it is so strongly linked to the republican mindset. They reward it socially thereby perpetuating it.

It's like they're in a racist echochamber. It only takes on racist to approve of another for it to become part of the republican social conscious.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

18. They like to project...

Their biggest fear is a race war where the battle cry is "Kill Whitey!"

It's a fear and a HOPE so they can have an excuse to slaughter anything not white.

[silverweb]

4. That was my take, too.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]"Divide and conquer" has been an age-old strategy for a very good reason: it works.

[Gravitycollapse]

5. I think you've missed the point by a bit...

Racism is not a fabrication of economics. It is merely manipulated by the ruling class. But the actual prejudice goes much deeper than money.

[Ed Suspicious]

7. Are you saying that racism is a natural condition of humanity? You may be right,

but I really think racism is manifest in cultural (maybe not necessarily confined to economic) advantage, and fear of losing said advantage.

I think back to my childhood and remember being friends with an Hispanic boy. I am lily white. We became longtime friends. It never even occurred to me during grade school through middle school and not until well into high school that he was of a different heritage than I was. I won't say that I was oblivious to race in general, but in my close relationship with this kid, I was absolutely color blind until high school. My point is that I think any unfortunate hint of racism I have in me is a conditioned and learned response to racial difference.

Racism, to me, is developed by watching societal reaction to difference. I wonder if we aren't taught racism, if there would effectively be no racism.

I guess that's why I see racism in America rooted in a self interested maintenance of materialistic advantages by those who feel they have much to lose.

[Gravitycollapse]

11. I think at the root of the problem is the conception of self and other.

Pain is the root of that conception. We learn fear of pain which thus constitutes a drive to maintain personal well-being and this drives the ego and all of the other psychic entities.

This manifests itself socially by constructing a fear of otherness since we identify the source of pain or suffering as the opposite of self. The consequence is that we begin to take unexplained anxieties and blame them on this otherness. Once we begin to grasp the existence of independent identities among our fellow human beings, the otherness takes on human form.

This contempt for others is justified in many different ways and all of them are irrational.

There is a seedling of this contempt inside us at a very young age which is then germinated through socialization.

[Ed Suspicious]

13. I see. It's a primal response that begins with a logical fallacy of correlation = causation.

The kernel of that mistake, over time and with the help of societal reinforcement grows and morphs into the realization that subjugation of the enemy other is just and can lead to economic advantage. A failure to seize this advantage is to cede that advantage to the enemy.

[2naSalit]

21. I think

that you are both right. Racism is a human construction formulated from the fear of (pain) and discomfort thought to be embodied within the "other" - a conclusion of the speculation of the origins of what is feared. It has become a useful tool for those who wish to have their perception of privilege imposed on those around them because it aids in the perception of that one holding power.

I do like the basic literature you used to start the discussion, Howard Zinn is one of my favorite historian/cultural analysts.

Good OP.

[rurallib]

27. Way back in the 80s there was a story on NPR of an anthropologist

who did his doctorate trying to find if there were any universally shared traits across all societies.
He came up with 2:

1) a form of racism - even if it was hating the tribe across the river. The enemy would be described in disparaging ways (eg smell, strange sex practices....
2) the use of an intoxicant, usually a fermented beverage, but could be something like mushrooms.....

This was baack in the wayback. I have never tried to find it on the internet, figuring it is just too old to find.

[bravenak]

9. Go back to the beginning of america when the poor immigrants called the natives 'savages'.

They did horrible things to those who were already here and used the fact that they were diffrent looking and not christians to justify it. It started immediately upon arrival to these shores. Land theft, murder, then slavery was introduced.
Our history is full of white supremacy, the oligarchs didn't invent that, they capitalized on it. Sorry.
All over the world europeans have colonized and subjected 'others' to their rule. From austrailia, to india, to america, to Africa, white supremacy has ruled for centuries.

[Jamaal510]

10. +1

[Ed Suspicious]

12. Right, but what was the impetus behind all the conquering. When Columbus encountered the tribe of

Arawaks at the Bahama islands he was greeted by the tribe with gifts and open arms. He exercised an advantage over the friendly natives because he recognized a potential gain in wealth and power for the crown as would be affirmed and rewarded by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain.

He took advantage of their giving nature and subjugated them for purposes of wealth and land. All that racism spawns from a lust for capital.

[bravenak]

14. It was racism that allowed him to make gains at their loss.

If he did not think that he were better than them, he would not have opened them up to oppression.
A race of people with superior technology stealing from and murdering 'savages' for their own gain is not being controlled by oligarchs. They did what the did because they though they were entitled to do so to those people, and they were backed up by the government. Not forced to do so by the government or rich people. Then they went around the world repeating the same crimes over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
Because they thought they were better than others and entitled to their stuff. And their lives.

[sheshe2]

26. Well done bravenak. eom

[ashling]

15. LBJ put it this way

If you can convince the lowliest white man that he is better than the highest black man, then he won't notice you picking his pocket

[freshwest]

16. You leave out that many whites own land. They benefit directly from racism by keeping non-whites

from achieving that status, and to keep land, networks and opportunities to themselves.

As galvanizing as the 1% rhetoric is for those whites who feel they are being mistreated more than POC have been historically, there are other percentages that matter more.

You also leave out the New Deal and what it did to equalize opportunity and spread the wealth. I find your analogy that the serfs and slaves had no way up to fail as it denies that the progressive era had any impact at all.

Despite our enjoying the imagery of illiterate, poor white teabaggers, statistics show the majority are not. They have jobs or land or connections. And they are living well enough to make mischief on other groups of society. There is more than one way to get ahead, hard work is only one of them.

The idea of meritocracy is the hope of the POC, their chance to achieve and to survive. Nepotism works just fine, and whites are embracing it openly in the Tea Party, as we've seen with their governorships.

Other whites squawk if they see connections they forged in life compete with POC who work and make wealth fray apart. There may only be so many steps on the ladder. The youth of the world coming here is denying them the privileges they thought were granted at birth. I see this creating a lot of resentment, and no one had to teach them..

Some don't mind feudalism anymore than supporters of aristocracy did in Europe. They found justifications for what they did because it benefited them in the first place. Ideology, religion, views of other people... those are add-ons after a person finds a way to live.

I see a history of America as a constant struggle between two societies who have been at odds with each other, living parallel realities that we are only now seeing clearer. They have co-existed, the rural with the urban, by help of government working to link them all for prosperity.

Now some in rural and suburban areas chafe at the rules set by others and find the reasons to denigrate all of those that aren't in their community or related by birth to them. Things are out of balance.

The veil is being lifted from seeing each other very well and we see a variety of ways of to live, some that do not believe in equality because wealth is made from inequality. From the ground up. And I see no innocents. I don't see the divide from being serfs.

I see the problem coming from those who are not in the 1% and are prosperous. They are driving the poor out of everything, as they always have. Because that is how the poor are made.

Still, an interesting take. I'll re-read my copy of Zinn's book and look for more such as you discovered.

[bravenak]

17. Great post!

You made some very good points.

[ErikJ]

19. Slave states also had white Slave-patrols which eventually became the KKK

Wikipedia:
Slave patrols (called patrollers, pattyrollers or paddy rollers by the slaves) were organized groups of three to six[citation needed] white men who enforced discipline upon black slaves in the antebellum U.S. southern states. They policed the slaves on plantations and hunted down fugitive slaves. Patrols used summary punishment against escapees, maiming or killing them. Slave patrols were first established in South Carolina in 1704, and the idea spread throughout the southern states. The institution of policing in America can be traced back to the slave patrols. ............more

[DeSwiss]

20. The natural human impulse is cooperation.

Our behavior is so programmed that we only see that impulse during emergencies or disasters nowadays. Times when we usually don't have a lot of time to think. We just do what we believe we should do. It's natural. If there's time for a selfie or to post some crazy shit on Youtube, we're just as likely to film someone drowning as to try to rescue them.

Competition on the other hand, is a manufactured concept based upon a belief in scarcity and/or loss. Scarcity was more an issue in man's early development but with agriculture and other inventions, abundance was the norm. Nature tends to produce way more than we need. All by itself.

''Civilization'' was created to change all that by maximizing and directing the wealth that was now being created with all these new inventions into the hands of a few. And the way to control it all was through a new concept called ''The Law'' and ''Property Ownership'' -- all of which is created and maintained through divisions. All kinds of divisions.

Raping and pillaging people is one way to divide by scaring some and killing the rest. Then those that are left have to pay tribute from then on so as not to be raped and pillaged -- as much. Today, we call this evolved form of tribute: TAXES.

Religions, social classes, poverty, disability, wealth, nobility, sex, sexual orientations, sexual identity, race -- all are dividing tools that are used to pit us against each other, rather than for the natural cooperation impulse (or just IGNORING OTHER PEOPLE'S SHIT) to hold sway. This is especially where the churches, synagogues mosques, and temples come in.

RELIGION. The Great Divider, like no other ever. Has killed and tortured people so much that they rival the likes of history's worst mass-murdering tyrants. And it's killings are done with great sanctity and with the knowledge that one's god has approved of one's murders, making them A-OK. We could never have evolved into this craziness without the priests leading the way. Because they know we're easy to scare -- with boogie men, devils and hellfires -- all provided as alternatives (plus heaven, with coupon) for us to choose from, in the full-knowledge that we're imperfect and sinful and therefore likely deserving of our terrible fate(s), whatever it is. And of course all of which makes us much, much easier to control this way.

Hell, we'd be impossible to control if we cooperated. They (TPTB) know this. We don't. Why? Because we're divided. Vicious circle, I know. The divisions and the ultimate dependencies it creates, continues. It's The New Slavery. A Slavery for Every Man. Except it's all but invisible to the slaves themselves. They call themselves: ''Debtors.''

So instead of shackles, instead of suffrage, instead of illegal immigration, instead of restrictive deed covenants, instead of blacks served at rear only, instead of no Jews allowed, instead of wearing of pink triangles and/or illegal incarcerations and immoral medical experimentation all under duress because of one's sexual orientation or color or for whatever ''scientific justification'' -- it is now DEBT SLAVERY FOR EVERYONE who is not in the 1%.

- It's simple, but effective. Which means even the morons with all that money and power can do it. And they will continue to until stopped -- by us.

K&R

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” ~George Orwell

[AverageJoe90]

22. Sad but damn true.

And the failure of Bacon's Rebellion got the ball rolling.....we've been suffering ever since.

[Why Syzygy]

23. bump

I think this is sensible. But does it explain worldwide racism? Libya? Egypt? Africa?

It doesn't explain the English eugenicists who decided the black race was capable of nothing more than slavery?

[JI7]

24. Bigots are not victims

some people are just hateful assholes .

[Ed Suspicious]

25. I just now finished chapter three. He

ended up going where I went in arguing that the racism was largely generated by the rich and the talk of liberty and currying favor with a newly coined "middle class" (a new word and a new idea) were designed to keep just enough division between the races as well as between the classes to keep the wealthy safe from any monetary loss or loss of status. This book is amazing. It really ought to be required reading.

[redruddyred]

28. my very intelligent friend believes

that the koch brothers couldn't possibly be associated with the teabaggers as they're just too damn crazy. I'm not sure whether I agree or disagree, but it's food for thought.
that said, howard zinn makes some excellent points, although, in my case he is preaching to the choir.

[Bluenorthwest]

29. Your friend is not well informed, the Koch Bros father founded the very crazy John Birch society

they come from and are the standard for too damn crazy in the US, leaders of the pack.

[redruddyred]

31. I visited their website

and I like how they claim to be god-fearing constitutionalists, despite the fact that the g-word was not mentioned once in said document.

[Wounded Bear]

30. The support of the Founding Fathers for true democracy...

is largely overstated in most history books. The American Revolution, like most revolutions, was initiated and operated by what we would consider to be the middle class these days. That's one reason the Constitution is set up like it is, to suppress the power of the democratic masses and prevent them, in their eyes, from voting themselves "rich."

I'm sure many of the FF would be appalled at the looming corporate power extant today. After all, they were quite cognizant that what they were really fighting, beyond the British Crown, was the East India Company, a model for the modern multi-national corporation subverting national government for their own profits. For many, it was a selfish decision. After all, the laws that triggered the Revolution were largely of the economic sanction types that boosted EIC profits and made life much harder for the local merchants, in effect stifling their avenues to more profits.

With the possible exception of Jefferson and Madison-who certainly had their differences-the idea of increasing or widening democracy was anathema to most of the FF. If you look at it closely, the Constitution is really just a stronger version of the Articles of Confederation, and was opposed by many of the same folks that would oppose it today. For all its beauty of composition, it is incredibly weak in many areas.

The use of racism and divide and conquer are SOP for governments, religious orders, hell for your Homeowners Association. Any entity interested in wresting and maintaining control over others' actions will be at least tempted to go there. Humans are naturally tribal in nature. We cooperate with our tribe and resist the other. The first order of business is to define what separates "us" from "them." Skin color is easy. Religious differences can be more difficult to point out, but it's still effective. The best defense, and their worst nightmare, is getting people to realize that "they" are more or less just like "us."