If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you. -Lyndon B. Johnson
Basically, people were already really racist against black people, so it’s easier to just continue that narrative. Build upon all the lies that were used to try and justify enslaving black people to make poor people, including other black people who believe the lies, blame black people for all their problems. That way we fight amongst ourselves instead of looking at and justly blaming the people with power and money
Before Trump’s rise it had become not-okay to be openly racist in most of the country so they had to pivot to openly attacking a different group: queer people, specifically trans people. (They were still very racist, just less open about it.) Blaming a minority or marginalized group is a classic conservative move to stop people from developing class consciousness and realizing that a poor cis straight white man has infinitely more in common with a poor queer trans black woman than a rich (like billionaire rich) cis straight white man
Keeponstalin@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Relevant section from A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
> As Morgan says, masters, “initially at least, perceived slaves in much the same way they had always perceived servants . . . shiftless, irresponsible, unfaithful, ungrateful, dishonest. . . .” And “if freemen with disappointed hopes should make common cause with slaves of desperate hope, the results might be worse than anything Bacon had done.” And so, measures were taken. About the same time that slave codes, involving discipline and punishment, were passed by the Virginia Assembly, >> Virginia’s ruling class, having proclaimed that all white men were superior to black, went on to offer their social (but white) inferiors a number of benefits previously denied them. In 1705 a law was passed requiring masters to provide white servants whose indenture time was up with ten bushels of corn, thirty shillings, and a gun, while women servants were to get 15 bushels of corn and forty shillings. Also, the newly freed servants were to get 50 acres of land. > Morgan concludes: “Once the small planter felt less exploited by taxation and began to prosper a little, he became less turbulent, less dangerous, more respectable. He could begin to see his big neighbor not as an extortionist but as a powerful protector of their common interests.” > We see now a complex web of historical threads to ensnare blacks for slavery in America: the desperation of starving settlers, the special helplessness of the displaced African, the powerful incentive of profit for slave trader and planter, the temptation of superior status for poor whites, the elaborate controls against escape and rebellion, the legal and social punishment of black and white collaboration.
FearMeAndDecay@literature.cafe 4 hours ago
I’ve never read that before. Thanks for sharing it!