The Economics of racism

My friend Mike is from Michigan and once told me that one of the most obnoxious phrases we southerners had was "white trash" because in his opinion it exposed us as having an established racist history. He explained that it implied that a white man who wasn't a success was simply unmotivated and lazy because he didn't capitalize on "advantages" he had over others.
         I thought about what he said, then remembered Alexander Stephens. the only vice president the Confederate States of America ever had. Stephens gave a speech in 1861 which he called the "Cornerstone Speech" in which he said the United States was attempting to give blacks equality to whites and that the Confederate States of America would be a government in which the black man would have his rightful place in servitude and that any white man would have the right to succeed on his own merits.

https://www.csaconstitution.com/p/alexander-h.html

My friend's assertion gave me pause to thought. I honestly believe that racism was never about "race" It's entirely economic.  Consider something: If YOU'RE rich and wish to employ others the thing you fear more than bankruptcy is organized labor.  A divided labor force is much easier to control.
      The formula for racism is simple. You need two groups of people, one of which to whom you  must belong and a second group. The second group can be either larger or smaller in number. The way it works is You must convince members of YOUR group that either they are SUPERIOR to or should be WARY of the other group. Cast the second group as  "other" and a threat which must be contained.
       In the American South in the 1700 or 1800s  an immigrant fresh off a boat from anywhere in Europe had to work hard for very little money just as he had to in Europe. He also had a distinct disadvantage if he arrived without money, friends or well established relatives who preceded him here.  The southern economy was controlled by a handful of wealthy men who owned African slaves. Why would a man hire you if he already owned twenty people whose sole purpose was to work for him?
     Most of the southern economy revolved around the plantation system.  Cotton, tobacco, rice and indigo were big business and those who didn't own plantations were in some way connected to shipping or trading the aforementioned OR providing the creature comforts to those who did.  There was even a subculture of unskilled men whose sole source of income was hunting down slaves who had escaped plantations.
            The fact about slavery was that it prevented many immigrants from working in fields, but it enabled a planter class to rise to prominence because the cost of feeding slaves and putting a shed over their heads was minimal compared to paying a wage.  When the confederacy eventually formed in 1861,  it told poor whites not only of their "superiority" over the person of color but also that their aspiration should be becoming one of the southern aristocracy who owned them.

           Wealthy white southerners opinions of poor whites was slightly lower than their opinions of slaves in some cases as evident by the fact that they entrusted slaves to prepare their meals, serve as valets, maids and butlers and  to be wet nurses to their children.  To insure that most poor whites saw blacks ONLY as slaves, many southern states had rigid laws restricting the rights of free blacks. Other states would simply not allow free blacks to reside within them.
          The "masses" while they had no real social or economic power could at least harbor a sense of superiority given to them by the elites because they are lead to believe they are NOT the bottom rung of society.

         This occurred in the American west with the arrival of Chinese in the 1840s. Wealthy men who hired Chinese by the dozen kept wages low for whites because they convinced the poor whites whom they also wished to underpay that the Chinese insisted on working for lower pay.  To be fair, this trick can and has been used with nationality. The Irish, Italians and Polish can tell stories of being used as economic scapegoats in the United States and to be honest racism is NOT an American invention. It is the fruit of colonialism and at the end of the day it's premise is simple: divide and concur and exploit each group after creating tension between them.
       Us versus them as a business practice while unethical, sadly has proven effective.  Were one to examine the third reich of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1944, its perverse racial politics succeeded because a small angry Austrian was able to convince other German speaking people that they were a great people who had suppressed by others, specifically a group of "others" within their midst.