Re: the origins of American racism...a chicken-or-the-egg situation

[forjusticethunders]

7. Former, induitably to me. I have to look up my Zinn and other sources to quote directly

But there are writings from slavers that explicitly talked about how solidarity between oppressed black and white workers literally kept them up at night. Once black/white rebellions got going, they created a FLURRY of laws and social mores to keep that from happening, all within like a 20 year period. Miscegenation laws date from that period, and didn't just refer to marrying/having children interracially but even communicating, drinking together, going to church together, everything.

The reason I'm a socialist is *because* of capitalism's role in creating, institutionalizing and exporting (people forget this part) racism. Prior to the capitalist period, racism was more along the lines of xenophobia which unfortunately is somewhat endemic to the human species, but capitalism in the Americas made it a SYSTEM, along the lines of the Indian caste system.

With that said, American racism evolved to a point where the system persisted and has even tried to recreate slavery (sharecropping, Jim Crow segregation, private prison labor) in many forms, despite the original slave system being destroyed.