By Michael Smith – Reflective MVS
Lyndon B. Johnson once offered a blunt lesson on power. “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,” he said. “Hell, give him somebody to look down on,
and he’ll empty his pockets for you”[1]. This bitter insight gets at a
truth running through U.S. history: again and again, elites have sown racial
and social divisions as a political strategy to protect their own wealth and
power. From the colonial era to today’s culture wars, American leaders have
used divide-and-conquer tactics – pitting poor whites against Black
people, native-born against immigrant, straight against queer – to distract
from economic injustice and break potential solidarity. The result has been a centuries-long
playbook of racial hierarchy that hurts ordinary people of all colors while
preserving the status quo. This report traces that legacy from Bacon’s
Rebellion in 1676 up through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights
era, and into our present-day battles over schools and culture. Along the way,
we’ll see how the very idea of “whiteness” was invented to split the working
class, how propaganda and violence enforced these divisions, and how brave
organizers like Fred Hampton tried to bridge the gap with multiracial
unity. Finally, we connect this history to the modern “culture war” – school
board fights, book bans, and moral panics – revealing how the old
divide-and-conquer strategy is still deployed to protect elite interests and
corporate profit at the expense of the common good.
Bacon’s Rebellion and the Invention of Whiteness
In 1676, about 100 years before the American Revolution, the Virginia colony
exploded in an uprising known as Bacon’s Rebellion. Frustrated by
poverty, high taxes, and lack of land, poor colonists – both white and Black
– took up arms together against the ruling planter class. For a brief
moment, bondservants of European descent and enslaved Africans found common
cause. They even forced the governor to flee and burned the capital of
Jamestown to the ground in their revolt[2][3]. This multiracial insurrection terrified the colonial elite. As one
account noted, “race” as we know it was essentially conjured up in
Virginia as a direct response to the specter of Black and white unity[4][5]. The planters feared that if poor whites and Blacks continued to join
forces, they could overthrow the established order entirely[5]. Their solution was as cunning as it was cruel: create a permanent
racial hierarchy to keep the two groups apart.
Over the next generation, Virginia’s lawmakers invented a new
concept of “whiteness” and wrote it into law to fracture class solidarity.
They granted privileges to poor European laborers while further
stripping away rights from people of African descent[3]. In the words of one historian, “by a series of acts, the assembly
deliberately did what it could to foster the contempt of whites for Blacks and
Indians.”[6] Practically, this meant white indentured servants were gradually given
lighter treatment and a path to freedom, while Black slavery was made permanent
and hereditary. New laws banned Black people from owning guns, holding
property, or even striking a white person in self-defense[7]. Black slaves could be brutally punished (even by dismemberment), yet
white servants could no longer be whipped[7]. Interracial marriage was outlawed. Crucially, even poor whites
were enlisted as enforcers: by 1727 Virginia required white men to serve on
slave patrols, catching fugitive slaves – effectively paying the poorer
whites a “wage” of status and power over Blacks[8]. By 1705, the colony had fully codified race-based slavery,
defining who counted as “negro” or “white” and giving every white
person, no matter how lowly, legal advantages over any person of African
descent[9][8].
The impacts of this racial divide were profound and lasting. Whiteness
now conferred a kind of public and psychological wage to Europeans of all
classes – a sense of superiority that eased the sting of their poverty[10]. As Black scholar W.E.B. Du Bois noted, even when poor white laborers
had little real wealth, they clung to the “badge” of whiteness as
compensation[10]. This was by design. After Bacon’s Rebellion, no Virginia underclass
would ever unite so easily across color lines. One colonial legislator openly
celebrated how keeping Blacks enslaved and giving “small rewards” to white
workers ensured the two groups would never join up to threaten the elite[8][11]. The tragic irony is that many poor whites accepted these crumbs of
status, even as the planter class continued to exploit them economically. It’s
a pattern that would repeat through U.S. history: racism gave working-class
whites someone to look down on, diverting their anger away from the rich and
powerful. In the centuries after Bacon’s Rebellion, American laws and
customs hardened around this black/white divide, entrenching a racial caste
system that outlived slavery itself. The stage was set for a nation where
freedom and equality would be brutally rationed along color lines – all to
ensure the planter elites and, later, industrial capitalists stayed on
top.
Reconstruction Backlash: Undermining Interracial Democracy
The Civil War’s end in 1865 brought a brief, dazzling vision of what a multiracial
democracy could look like in the South. During Reconstruction
(1865–1877), formerly enslaved Black people gained citizenship, voting
rights, and even held public office alongside white Republicans. Poor white
farmers, many of whom had never owned slaves, sometimes allied politically with
Black freedmen under the banner of the Union League or the Republican Party.
This was a direct threat to the old Southern aristocracy: for a few
years, Black and white citizens governed together, expanded public
education, and attempted to rebuild the South on a more equal footing[12][13]. But almost as quickly as it began, this experiment was met with a
ferocious backlash. The former Confederate planter class and their allies
launched what they openly called a “Redemption” campaign – not redeeming
souls, but redeeming white supremacy. Through terror and propaganda, they drove
a wedge between white and Black Southerners to “redeem” the South from
Reconstruction’s gains.
The tools of this counter-revolution were blunt. White terrorist
organizations like the Ku Klux Klan sprang up, murdering Black officials,
intimidating Black voters, and attacking any whites who supported them.
Paramilitary gangs of ex-Confederate soldiers (the “White League” and “Red
Shirts”, among others) roamed states like Louisiana and South Carolina,
using violence to overturn election results and restore all-white government.
The federal government, controlled by northern politicians increasingly indifferent
to Black rights, withdrew troops in 1877 as part of a political compromise,
effectively leaving Black citizens at the mercy of their former enslavers. What
followed was the systematic unraveling of Black freedom. By the 1890s, every
southern state had enacted new constitutions or laws to disenfranchise Black
voters – and many poor white voters as well. Poll taxes, literacy tests
(often with “grandfather clauses” to exempt poor whites), and outright fraud
cleared the voter rolls of most African Americans. Mississippi, for example,
went from ~190,000 Black voters registered in 1890 to effectively zero
by 1892 after its new constitution; tens of thousands of poor white farmers
were disenfranchised as “collateral damage,” which the elite accepted as long
as Black political power was destroyed[14].
Hand in hand with disenfranchisement came the Jim Crow laws – an
apartheid regime of segregation that formalized the social separation of races
in every sphere of life. White supremacists understood that if Black and white
workers learned to see each other as comrades rather than eternal rivals, the
whole caste system could crumble. So Jim Crow sought to prevent even the
smallest daily interactions on an equal basis. Schools, train cars,
bathrooms, restaurants, even drinking fountains were segregated by race. A
Black sharecropper and a white sharecropper might toil in the same cotton
fields, equally impoverished, but when they went to town, one had to enter
through the “Colored” door, drink from the “Colored” fountain, and sit in the
back of the bus. The message was clear: you two may both be poor, but
remember who is “above” the other.
The white South’s campaign to retake power wasn’t subtle – it was often
advertised in plain terms. During the 1898 election in North Carolina,
for instance, a coalition of Black Republicans and white Populists (the
“Fusion” ticket) had bravely come together to challenge the Democrats’ white
supremacist rule. In response, Democratic newspapers raged about the threat of
“Negro domination.” One infamous political cartoon from Raleigh’s News &
Observer showed a devil whispering to a white voter about to cast a ballot
labeled “For Negro Rule,” with the caption “DON’T BE TEMPTED BY THE DEVIL.”[17][18] The transparent aim was to scare enough white voters away from any
alliance with Black citizens. It worked. That year, white mobs in Wilmington,
NC, went so far as to stage a violent coup d’etat, overthrowing the
elected biracial city government. They massacred dozens of Black residents and
ran Black leaders and their white allies out of town at gunpoint[19][20]. The Wilmington insurrection of 1898 stands as a stark example
of how far the architects of Jim Crow would go: literally toppling democracy to
prevent Black and white people from sharing power. Across the South, similar
(if less extreme) patterns played out as white supremacy campaigns used
every tool—fear, fraud, murder, and the allure of privilege—to sever the
bonds of class solidarity that briefly existed after the Civil War.
By the early 20th century, the racial order of the South was set in
iron. Poor white farmers, who had once been courted by interracial Populist
movements, were largely won over or intimidated into the segregationist camp.
They received the psychological wage of being “white” even as many
remained mired in poverty under the thumb of the same landlords and
industrialists who oppressed Black workers. And Black Americans were forced
into second-class status: denied votes, decent schools, or economic mobility, and
kept in line by the ever-present threat of lynching and violence[21][22]. This was a divide-and-conquer strategy on a massive scale,
hardening a caste divide that sapped the political power of all working
people in the South. As one commentator observed, by disenfranchising Blacks,
southern elites also disempowered the majority of poor folks: “They
took the votes from the Negroes and so doing also took from the white people”
(a fact poor whites realized too late)[13][23]. In short, racism was used to get non-wealthy whites to act against
their own economic interests, ensuring that no “lower-class” fusion could
challenge the rich. This tragic dynamic was exactly what Johnson would later
describe – give one group of have-nots somebody to look down on, and they’ll
let you pick their pockets clean.
The Psychological Wage: How Racism Fueled 20th Century Politics
The Jim Crow era wasn’t just a social system; it was a highly
effective political strategy that reverberated beyond the South. American
industry and government grew explosively in the first half of the 20th century,
but so did efforts to keep working people divided. For example, even as labor
unions formed to fight for better wages, many unions excluded Black workers
or maintained segregated locals, undermining worker unity. Business owners and
reactionary politicians routinely stoked racial fears to break strikes and
derail reforms – hiring Black “scabs” to breed resentment during white strikes,
or warning white workers that labor rights for Black people would come at their
expense. This strategy wasn’t confined to Black and white divides either: Asian
and Latino immigrants were likewise pitted against native-born workers through
racist scapegoating. The targets shifted, but the game plan remained the same.
By the mid-20th century, civil rights activism began to challenge
America’s racial caste system. The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education
decision and the mass movements of the 1950s–60s struck legal blows against
segregation. Progress was being made: de jure Jim Crow was dismantled by
new laws, Black voters were re-enfranchised after 1965, and overt racism in
politics became less socially acceptable. Yet the divide-and-conquer playbook
did not simply disappear – it evolved. In fact, some of the most
consequential use of racial division as a political tool came after the
civil rights era, in more coded forms. Politicians refined a dog-whistle
language to appeal to racist sentiments without explicitly mentioning race,
keeping the “low white” vs “other” dynamic alive while claiming plausible
deniability.
One architect of this approach was Republican strategist Lee Atwater,
who candidly explained the party’s “Southern Strategy” in a 1981
interview. “You start out in 1954 by saying ‘ner, ner, ner.’
By 1968 you can’t say that – it backfires. So you say stuff like ‘forced
busing,’ ‘states’ rights,’ and all that stuff,” Atwater said, describing how
overt slurs were replaced by abstract policies[24]. “You’re getting so abstract now [that]
you’re talking about cutting taxes... and a byproduct of them is [that] Blacks
get hurt worse than whites.”[24] In other words, the goal of courting the racist vote remained, but the
rhetoric shifted to issues like “law and order,” welfare, crime, or school
zoning – ostensibly color-blind topics that signaled*
support for racial hierarchy. This tactic proved devastatingly effective. In
the wake of Democratic-led civil rights victories,
white discontent (especially in the South) was harnessed by politicians like
Richard Nixon, Strom Thurmond, and later Ronald Reagan, who talked about
“welfare queens” and “criminal thugs” in thinly veiled racial terms[25]. Reagan, for instance, popularized the image of the welfare queen – a lazy, Cadillac-driving (implied Black) woman cheating honest
taxpayers – to turn white working-class voters against social programs that
many of them actually needed[25]. This was race-baiting as policy: by demonizing Black recipients of
aid, conservatives built support for cuts to welfare, food assistance, and
other safety nets, hurting poor families of all races. But the white
middle-class voter, hearing the dog whistle, was led to believe he was mainly
punishing the Black “freeloader,” not shooting himself in the foot.
The pattern extended well beyond the black-white binary. In the War
on Crime/War on Drugs from the 1970s–1990s, politicians successfully fanned
fears of Black “criminals” to justify harsh policing and mass incarceration –
policies which devastated Black communities but also diverted attention from
economic issues like deindustrialization. After 9/11, a new scapegoat
emerged as Muslims and Arab Americans were cast as the threatening “other”;
this fear was used to win elections and pass invasive security laws. Time and
again, manufactured outrage against a marginalized group became a rallying
point to “unify” the majority – but always in a way that benefited the powerful
and sidelined real problems. As one historian put it, these culture war
battles “rarely require policy solutions that address material conditions” –
they are symbolic fights that fire up voters’ emotions while ignoring
inequality, wage stagnation, or lack of healthcare[26].
Perhaps the most blatantly cynical use of racial division in the 20th
century was the FBI’s notorious COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence
Program). In the 1960s, as movements for Black liberation, Indigenous rights,
and working-class power grew, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI saw interracial
solidarity as the ultimate threat. Declassified COINTELPRO memos reveal
the FBI’s fear of a “Black messiah” – a charismatic Black leader who could
unite oppressed groups[27][28]. Hoover explicitly targeted any Black organizers who reached out to
poor whites or Latinos. The Black Panther Party in particular, with its
Marxist class analysis and multiracial alliances, set off alarm bells. Fred
Hampton, the 21-year-old chairman of the Black Panthers in Illinois, became
a prime target when he began forming what he called a “Rainbow Coalition”
of Black, brown, and white poor folks in Chicago[29][30]. Hampton and his allies (including the Puerto Rican Young Lords
and the poor Southern white Young Patriots group) organized across color
lines, recognizing that their communities all suffered from poverty, bad
housing, and police brutality. They would show up for each other’s causes – for
instance, Black Panthers supported the Young Patriots’ fight against urban
renewal displacements, and vice versa[31][32]. In Rainbow Coalition meetings, Appalachian white migrants in denim
and Confederate-flag patches sat next to Black Panthers in berets and Latino
activists with Puerto Rican flags – an unheard-of tableau of unity in
1969. By feeding kids breakfast and patrolling streets together, they
demonstrated that poor Black and white neighborhoods had more in common with
each other than with the wealthy Chicago mayor who neglected them[31].
To the powers that be, this was intolerable. A Chicago police chief
reportedly said the most dangerous threat he saw was “when white kids and black
kids come together” – and Fred Hampton was making that happen. Under
COINTELPRO, the FBI infiltrated Hampton’s organization with informants (like
William O’Neal) to sow distrust and set him up[33][34]. In December 1969, just weeks after Hampton brokered a major peace
between Chicago street gangs to refocus on social issues, the police – with FBI
coordination – raided his apartment and assassinated him in his bed[35][36]. He was only 21. The murder of Fred Hampton decapitated the Rainbow
Coalition’s leadership and sent a chilling message to other activists. As one
of Hampton’s Puerto Rican comrades said at his funeral, “What are we doing
that’s so bad that they have to come and kill us?”[37]. The answer was implicit: they were threatening the power structure
by uniting people across racial lines. Hampton had a slogan, “You don’t
fight fire with fire – you fight fire with water.” He meant that hate and
racism couldn’t be defeated by more hate, only by solidarity and understanding.
But those preaching solidarity have always faced an uphill battle when the
forces of division are backed by the state. COINTELPRO’s bloody suppression of
groups like the Black Panthers, American Indian Movement, and Young Lords
showed how far the establishment would go to prevent a coalition of the
oppressed. Even moderate civil rights leaders weren’t spared – Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. had been spied on and harassed by the FBI until the day he
died, in part because by 1968 he too was organizing a multiracial Poor
People’s Campaign and speaking out against the Vietnam War (challenging
both racial and class divisions).
The through-line from Bacon’s Rebellion to Jim Crow to COINTELPRO is
clear: whenever oppressed people start to unite, those in power aggressively
move to fracture them. In the 1670s it was the planter class inventing
“whiteness”; in the 1960s it was Hoover’s men plotting to neutralize Black
leadership and pit groups against each other (the FBI wrote fake letters to
spark feuds between Black Panthers and rival activists, for example). The
weapons and tactics evolved, but the goal remained the same – prevent a Rainbow
alliance that could demand economic justice and political change.
Culture Wars and the Modern Divide-and-Conquer
If the tactics of division adapted with time, so too did the theater.
Today, explicit Jim Crow laws are gone and overt racist slurs are largely taboo
in public life. But the politics of fear and distraction are more
rampant than ever. Over the past decade, America has seen a sharp rise in what
we call “culture wars” – pitched battles over social issues like how
history is taught, which books are in libraries, whose rights are recognized,
and what truth can be said out loud. On the surface, these fights often center
on moral disagreements or identity. Scratch that surface, and you’ll find the
fingerprints of the old divide-and-conquer playbook: marginalized groups
scapegoated, communities set against each other, and economic grievances
redirected into cultural outrage.
Consider the recent frenzy over school curriculums and book bans.
Across the country, especially in politically conservative regions, school
board meetings have become battlegrounds over “critical race theory” (CRT),
LGBTQ+ content, and how teachers discuss America’s past. Parents are
understandably passionate about their kids’ education – and politicians have
seized on that, fueling a panic that children are being “indoctrinated” with
un-American ideas or made to feel guilty about race. In reality, CRT (a term
from law academia) was not actually taught in K-12 schools; it was
turned into a catch-all boogeyman for any frank teaching about racism.
Nonetheless, by 2021–2022 we saw dozens of state laws introduced to restrict
lessons on race, history, and gender, often under Orwellian names like
“divisive concepts” bans. At local levels, activists read cherry-picked,
out-of-context passages from novels at meetings to whip up shock. The
result? A wave of coordinated book challenges and bans in libraries and
classrooms. In 2023 alone, the American Library Association tracked over 1,200
attempts to censor books – the highest in decades[38]. The most-targeted titles overwhelmingly were those by or about Black
people, LGBTQ people, or other marginalized groups[39]. Classic novels with racist language or violence (say Huckleberry
Finn or 1984) weren’t touched; instead books like The Bluest Eye
by Toni Morrison or memoirs by queer teens were pulled off shelves.
What is driving this? Proponents claim they’re “protecting children.”
But the selective nature reveals a cynical motive: stoking a moral
panic to rally a political base[40]. By labeling diverse stories as “dangerous” or “inappropriate,”
certain politicians have reframed public education itself as a cultural war
zone[41]. This manufactured outrage serves to distract from chronic
underfunding of schools, widening inequality, and other material issues.
It’s telling that while a state legislature debates banning an award-winning YA
novel about a Black girl’s experience, they’re not debating, say,
increasing teacher salaries or broadband access. Discomfort is weaponized:
parents are led to fear books more than budget cuts[41]. And once again, the bogeymen are often historically marginalized
groups – people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ folks – painted as threats to
(white, Christian) “family values.” It’s a modern echo of the old refrain: “Those
people are going to hurt your children and way of life, so join our side and
fight them – not the real issues.”
Another flashpoint has been the surge of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation,
especially targeting transgender youth and drag performers. States have
introduced bans on gender-affirming healthcare, sports participation, even on
drag shows under the guise of “protecting kids.” In one absurd example,
Tennessee tried to ban drag performances in public, ostensibly to stop children
from seeing explicit content. Never mind that drag queens reading storybooks to
kids (the actual target) are fully clothed and PG-rated – the law’s
vaguely written language threatened even Pride parades and trans people
existing openly. As observers noted, this is a “rhetorical sleight of hand”:
conflating extreme scenarios (“strip shows for kids!”) with everyday expression[42]. The real result isn’t protecting anyone – it’s creating an imagined
enemy, an “outgroup” to hate and fear, and a rallying cry for one side of
the political aisle[42][43]. Polls show most Americans do not view drag queens or trans
folks as a major problem[43], yet these issues dominate news cycles and campaign ads. Why? Because
they are effective wedge issues. They assert control over a marginalized
minority (scoring points with certain voters) and divert attention from
failures to deliver on more mundane but important needs. It’s tragically
notable that some of the states loudest about banning books or drag are also
ones refusing to expand healthcare under Medicaid, or underfunding their public
schools, or giving big tax breaks to corporations. The outrage is strategically
amplified to keep people from asking, “Hey, why are our hospitals closing
and our roads full of potholes?” It’s the old magician’s trick: misdirection.
While we’re busy arguing over bathroom bills or library books, the billionaires
and insiders carry on picking our pockets in the background.
The culture war strategy has been supercharged by modern
technology. Social media and partisan cable news act like jet fuel for these
divisive narratives[44]. A lie or exaggeration that might have died out quietly now finds
millions of eyeballs overnight. Algorithms favor emotional, enraging content –
creating a feedback loop where politicians and pundits compete to gin up ever
more outrage about “the Other side.” The result is a constant state of
hysteria: one week it’s migrant caravans, the next it’s “CRT,” then it’s Mr.
Potato Head’s gender or some celebrity’s offhand comment. As a recent
commentary noted, “We are not witnessing a spontaneous uprising of public
values. We are watching the deliberate construction of a spectacle.”[45] In this spectacle, anger is weaponized to keep us from looking
behind the curtain[46]. When the economy falters or millions lack healthcare, rather than
unite the public to demand solutions, the narrative shifts: “Look over here
– a book about Ruby Bridges might make white kids feel bad!” It would be
farcical if it weren’t so effective.
And effective it has been. Elections are increasingly fought on
culture war terrain, which benefits those in power in two ways. First, it
energizes a voting base on visceral issues that require no expensive policy
promises – only symbolic stands. (Much cheaper to rail against “wokeness” than,
say, to propose a job program or rural healthcare funding.) Second, it allows
leaders to avoid addressing economic grievances that cut across race or
party. As one analyst put it, “Culture wars provide an emotional currency
that draws media coverage and polarizes opponents. Best of all, they rarely
require solving the problems that actually plague people’s lives.”[26]. While we fight over Dr. Seuss’s estate or a Disney character’s
sexuality, bipartisan failures like unaffordable housing, student debt, and
climate change get worse in the background[47]. The real costs of this distraction are immense. Here’s one
snapshot: in 2023, over 11% of U.S. households were food insecure (not
sure where their next meal is coming from)[48]. Medical debt is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy[48]. Our life expectancy as a nation has been dropping. These are not
issues caused by too many library books or drag queens. And no
amount of banning a novel or boycotting a beer brand will fix them[48][49]. In fact, the culture war diversion often exacerbates real
problems by actively targeting those who are already vulnerable. For instance,
passing laws to ostracize LGBTQ youth contributes to mental health crises and
teen homelessness. Banning discussions of racism in classrooms leaves young
people less equipped to live in a diverse society, while doing nothing to
address racial achievement gaps or under-resourced schools. It’s all sound
and fury – distracting us while the rich quietly get richer.
And they have gotten richer. It’s no coincidence that while the
culture war dominates working-class America’s attention, economic inequality
has ballooned. During the pandemic alone (2020–2022), U.S. billionaires saw
their collective wealth surge by over $1.7 trillion – a 57% increase – even as
ordinary families buried loved ones and struggled with job loss. Corporations
in sectors like oil, pharmaceuticals, and tech have posted record profits,
often while invoking “woke culture” scapegoats to dismiss criticism (for
example, a fast-food CEO blaming poor sales on millennial attitudes
rather than poverty wages). The ruling class benefits immensely when the
public is divided and distracted. History shows that when Americans unite
across racial and social lines to demand change – whether in the New Deal era
or the Civil Rights movement – the powers-that-be must concede some of
their wealth and control. On the flip side, when Americans are fighting each
other, elites can consolidate power unabated. One might recall how
during the Reagan years, even as many white working-class voters cheered
his tough talk on “welfare queens,” his administration busted unions, slashed
taxes for the rich, and tripled the national debt, laying the groundwork for
our current oligarchy. The cultural issues were a smokescreen; the
economic agenda was always upward distribution of wealth. The same pattern
holds now: a state that spends its legislative sessions on “Don’t Say Gay”
bills or banning Maus from libraries usually isn’t expanding Medicaid or
raising the minimum wage – policies that would materially help the majority but
maybe require taxing a few millionaires. In this way, the culture war is
class war by other means: a class war the wealthy are waging and winning,
largely because they’ve convinced enough of us that our fellow citizens are the
enemy, instead of them.
Bridging the Divide: Solidarity as the Counter-Strategy
Yet, amidst this bleak cycle, there have always been those who fought
to rebuild cross-racial solidarity and expose the divide-and-conquer
con. From the abolitionists to the union halls to Black freedom fighters,
American history is also rich with examples of courageous coalition-building.
These movements show a different path – one where people reject the false bait
of hatred and come together for shared interests.
Fred Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition in 1969 was one such beacon,
brutally snuffed out but not forgotten. Its spirit lived on and in fact
inspired Rev. Jesse Jackson to adopt the name “Rainbow Coalition” for
his groundbreaking presidential campaigns in the 1980s, which united Black
voters with white farmers, labor unions, and other people of color groups in a
broad progressive alliance. Even before that, the 1930s saw flashes of unity
like the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, an integrated union of Black
and white sharecroppers fighting abusive landlords. It was met with violence
and repression, but it proved poor Southerners could stand together when
faced with starvation. In the 1940s, unions like the United Auto Workers
(UAW) began deliberately organizing across racial lines in Detroit and
elsewhere, realizing that racism only served the bosses. And of course, the Civil
Rights Movement itself succeeded in part by appealing to the conscience of
all Americans: many white and Latino allies rode Freedom buses, registered
voters in Mississippi, and marched at Selma for Black equality – and
increasingly linked arms with campaigns for economic justice and peace.
Today, the need for solidarity is as urgent as ever, and many are
answering the call. One major effort is the revival of Dr. King’s last vision:
the Poor People’s Campaign, re-launched in 2018 under Rev. William
Barber II and Rev. Liz Theoharis. This movement explicitly aims to unite poor
and low-income Americans of every race, creed, and region around the common
cause of ending poverty and systemic racism. They frequently point out that
there are 140 million poor or low-wealth people in the country – nearly
half the population – and that the single largest racial group among the
poor is white[50][51]. Barber often preaches that poverty is the consequence of policy
choices, sustained by racial division. He likes to remind people that in many
Southern states, the majority of those on welfare or Medicaid are white, even
as white politicians stigmatize those programs as handouts to minorities[52][53]. The campaign’s philosophy echoes what Black intellectuals like Du
Bois and Heather McGhee (The Sum of Us) have argued: that racism is
used to trick working people of all colors into accepting a poorer deal. By
contrast, multi-racial solidarity offers a “solidarity dividend” – gains
that only come when people join forces across race. For example, when a
diverse labor union wins higher wages, all workers benefit; when schools
are well-funded, all students thrive. The Poor People’s Campaign
and allied organizers are building “fusion coalitions” in states like North
Carolina, West Virginia, and Kentucky – places often pigeonholed as hopelessly
reactionary – and winning some surprising victories. They have united Black
pastors, white Appalachian holler-dwellers, Latina service workers, and
Indigenous activists to fight regressive state budgets and voter suppression.
In one noteworthy case, a multiracial coalition in Alabama (a state with
deep racial wounds) recently came together to block a new landfill from poisoning
a poor rural community, highlighting environmental injustices that crossed
racial lines. These efforts show that when the focus shifts to shared
struggles – lack of healthcare, living wages, clean water, decent housing – the
old racial wedges start to lose their power. It’s slow and difficult work,
to be sure, but it is happening.
On the labor front, we are witnessing a new wave of union
organizing that is refreshingly inclusive. The recent successful union drives
at companies like Amazon and Starbucks have been led by young, diverse
workforces: Black, brown, white, immigrant, LGBTQ, you name it. At an Amazon
warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, the majority-Black workforce partnered with
white organizers and even some Trump-supporting coworkers on the basic premise
that all of them deserve better pay and conditions. At Starbucks stores,
baristas of every background wear pro-union buttons as a sign that their unity
on the job overcomes any cultural divides outside of it. Teachers’ strikes
in 2018–2019 swept across “red” states like West Virginia, Oklahoma, and
Arizona – led mostly by white educators, but winning crucial support from Black
and Latino parents and community members who saw that investing in teachers
meant investing in their kids. In West Virginia, striking teachers (some of
whom had voted for conservative politicians who underpaid them) famously
carried signs like, “I support my coal miner husband – he supports my teacher
strike.” Such cross-sector solidarity rattled the political establishment. The
strikers won raises not just for themselves but for all state employees,
a dividend of standing together. It’s notable that many of these strikes
deliberately avoided partisan framing and instead spoke in moral terms that
anyone could get behind: “It’s about right and wrong, not left or
right,” one Oklahoma teacher said, underscoring that decent school funding
isn’t a liberal or conservative issue but a community one.
Meanwhile, activists in movements like Black Lives Matter have
increasingly emphasized intersectionality and joint struggle. The 2020
protests after George Floyd’s murder brought out one of the most
multiracial crowds in U.S. protest history – millions of people of all races
marching in solidarity for Black lives, and linking that cause with broader
calls for justice (from economic inequality to policing to public health).
Rather than isolating Black activists, the movement drew strength from allies:
white moms forming human “walls” to protect Black protesters in Portland;
Latino and Asian American youth organizing rallies in their neighborhoods
declaring racism has no place; Native American groups sending supplies and
statements of unity. Even rural predominantly white towns saw BLM vigils. This
marked a significant counter to the divide-and-conquer narrative – and
predictably, it also sparked a fierce backlash (the aforementioned anti-CRT
laws, for example, arose partly as reaction to 2020’s racial reckoning). Still,
that moment proved that broad solidarity is possible, and it scared
those who profit from division. No wonder certain media outlets went into
overdrive to reframe BLM as “violent” or extremist – sowing confusion to dampen
the coalition.
On the political front, there are signs of change too. Some
emerging leaders openly call out the racial wedge tactics and urge voters to
see through them. For instance, in Kansas – a state that had been roiled by
fights over transgender student athletes – voters in 2022 overwhelmingly
rejected an abortion ban, a result attributed to coalition organizing among
women across ideological and racial lines. In that campaign, organizers
consciously avoided getting sucked into the national partisan noise, instead talking
neighbor-to-neighbor about healthcare and freedom. Similarly, a remarkable
interracial coalition of Black, white, and Latino working-class voters in Georgia
has, in recent years, flipped the state’s politics on its head – not by playing
identity groups off each other, but by focusing on issues like Medicaid
expansion, rural hospital closures, and voter access that affect everyone. They
succeeded in electing a more diverse slate of leaders who reflect a new
majority consensus: that everyday people united can beat big money. That
is the heart of the matter – convincing everyday people that our fates are
linked.
To be clear, none of this is easy. America’s racial divide has been
centuries in the making, and the wounds and mistrust it caused are real.
Building durable cross-racial solidarity requires confronting the very real history
of racism – not ignoring it. It means white people grappling with
uncomfortable truths about privilege, and people of color extending a hand to
potential allies who have been misled. It also means designing movements that
offer everyone a tangible stake: solidarity can’t just be an abstraction, it
has to deliver results (better jobs, safer streets, etc.) so folks see the
benefit of sticking together. The divide-and-conquer strategy works in part
because it gives a cheap payoff (a sense of superiority or belonging) even as
it hurts people in the long run. A solidarity strategy has to offer a deeper,
more lasting reward: dignity and improvements for all. The Rainbow
Coalition Fred Hampton envisioned was not about “Kumbaya” moments; it was
about a multiculture of the oppressed becoming a powerful force to get things
like free healthcare clinics, breakfast for children, and community control of
policing. Today’s movements carry that same practical focus – whether it’s
living wage ordinances or union contracts or climate justice projects that
create jobs. When a cross-racial alliance wins something concrete, it chips
away at the lie that one group must lose for another to gain.
Perhaps the biggest reason for hope is that young people today are
less interested in the old divisions. Polls show that millennials and Gen Z
(the most diverse generations in U.S. history) tend to support
multiculturalism, LGBTQ rights, and anti-racist policies at higher rates than
their elders. They also harbor deep skepticism toward corporate power and the
economic status quo. This doesn’t mean youth are magically immune to divide
tactics – online spaces show they are still targeted with misinformation that
can amplify prejudices. But many youth-led movements – from March for Our Lives
(against gun violence) to Sunrise (for climate action) to the Dreamers (for
immigrant rights) – have consciously built inclusive coalitions. They see the
interconnections: how climate change and racial injustice and economic
inequality intersect. As one young organizer quipped, “The billionaires want us
fighting over Mr. Potato Head while they rob us blind. Nah, we’re not
falling for that.” That attitude, widespread among younger activists, bodes
well for solidarity.
History is not destiny. The racial and social
divisions in America were deliberately engineered, and what’s made by humans can
be unmade by humans. The past shows both the pitfalls and the possibilities.
We’ve seen how quickly progress can be undermined when people fall for
divide-and-conquer tricks – but we’ve also seen glorious moments when the spell
was broken: Bacon’s militia of Black and white rebels; Reconstruction’s
fleeting interracial governments; the union picket lines where black and white
coal miners stood arm in arm; the Freedom Summer volunteers registering voters;
the Rainbow Coalition breakfast tables feeding kids of all colors; the 2020
streets filled with people demanding justice for someone of another race
because they recognized shared humanity. Each of these moments contains a
lesson and an inspiration.
One especially instructive voice from the past is that of Martin
Luther King Jr., who in his final years zeroed in on the alliance of poor
whites and Blacks as key to defeating what he called the “triplets of evil –
racism, materialism, and militarism.” In 1965, King spoke to poor white
Alabamians and said: “You are kept segregated, and you have stood
firmly against us… But the problem is, you’ve been deprived by the same
cause.” He urged them to see that the planter class had told them, “You
are still better than the Black man,” to prevent them from unionizing with
Black workers. King’s words fell on many deaf ears at the time – but some did
listen, and their children remember. Today, some of those very counties in the
South are seeing, for the first time, multi-racial voting blocs and coalition
candidates. It is a slow awakening, but it is happening.
In
summation, the divide-and-conquer strategy of racial and social
division has been a core feature of U.S. politics since the 17th century.
It has taken many forms – from slave codes to Jim Crow laws to dog-whistle
campaigns to social media psy-ops – but always with the consistent aim of keeping
the masses from uniting against their true oppressors. It has been
devastatingly effective, but not invincible. Elites may have money and media,
but people united have sheer numbers and moral power. Solidarity is the
antidote to divide-and-rule. This isn’t naïve idealism; it’s hard-nosed
strategy. As labor organizer Lucy Parsons (a Black and Mexican woman who
organized white railroad workers in the 1880s) once said, “We [must] stand
together. They can’t put all of us down.” Every time
Americans have stood together, we’ve made strides – from winning the 8-hour
workday to enacting Social Security and civil rights laws. Every time we’ve
allowed ourselves to be split, we’ve seen rollbacks and exploitation.
Today’s culture wars – the school board melees, the panics over
pronouns and history books – are just the latest incarnation of the age-old
game. They want us to see each other as enemies so that we don’t
see them (the oligarchs, the power-hoarders) as the real problem. But
more and more people are catching on. They’re reading past the clickbait and
remembering that their co-worker or neighbor is not the enemy just because they
look or pray or love differently. They’re realizing that a just society
isn’t a pie where one group’s bigger slice means another’s smaller slice – it’s
one where the oven gets bigger and we all get to feast.
In the Reflective MVS spirit, let’s paint the picture: imagine a mural
split down the middle. On one side, the old America – a smoky scene of Bacon’s
Rebellion, Jamestown burning, a planter handing a poor white man a rifle and
pointing him at a Black man. Then the next panel: a hooded Klan figure
whispering to a white voter in 1898, “Don’t be tempted by equality.” Next: a
1960s FBI agent pinning up photos of Black, brown, and white activists joined
in protest, scrawling “TARGET” over Fred Hampton’s face. Finally, on the other
side of the split, the new America struggling to be born – a diverse crowd of
workers linking arms on a picket line; parents of all backgrounds packing a
school board meeting to demand better funding instead of bans; a vibrant street
mural that reads “Solidarity Divided Is Solidarity Denied” and shows
figures of different races lifting each other up. Above it all, faint but
present, the ghosts of those who tried to warn us – Johnson tipping his hat
wryly with his pocket quote, Du Bois with pen in hand writing about the wages
of whiteness, Fred Hampton with a gentle smile saying, “I am a revolutionary,”
and MLK, arm outstretched, proclaiming “We may have come on different ships,
but we’re in the same boat now.”
The powerful have always known how to divide and conquer. The
question is, will we the people finally learn to unite and prevail? The
answer, to paraphrase another great organizer, depends on the courage and
clarity of our hearts. It’s a choice – the same choice posed since Bacon’s
time: solidarity or supremacy, shared power or false privilege, one nation
or a divided house. Our history’s long shadow urges us to choose wisely,
for a divided house cannot stand. The forces of division will not cease
voluntarily; they will always manufacture a new wedge. But if we name the game,
reject the bait, and hold tight to each other, we can at last break the cycle. The
antidote to divide-and-conquer is unity-and-win. The sooner we realize
that, the sooner we truly form a more perfect Union – one Nation, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
Sources: Historical analysis of Bacon’s
Rebellion and the colonial creation of race[3][54]; W.E.B. Du Bois on the “public and psychological wage” of whiteness[10]; Lyndon B. Johnson quote on poor whites and race[1]; Reconstruction’s collapse and white supremacy campaigns[19][20]; COINTELPRO’s fear of a “Black messiah” and targeting of Fred Hampton[27][29]; Fred Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition achievements[30][31]; modern culture war tactics and book bans[38][41]; analysis of manufactured outrage and distraction in politics[45][26]; statistics on food insecurity amid culture wars[48].
[1] Opinion | WHAT A REAL PRESIDENT
WAS LIKE - The Washington Post
[2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [11] [54] Bacon’s Rebellion and the Making
of “Race” in the United States – Speak Out Now
https://speakoutsocialists.org/bacons-rebellion-and-the-making-of-race-in-the-united-states/
[10] [12] [13] [23] Black Reconstruction in America -
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Reconstruction_in_America
[14] [15] [16] [21] [22]
Amistad Digital Resource: Jim Crow
https://www.amistadresource.org/plantation_to_ghetto/jim_crow.html
[17] [18] [19] [20] Wilmington massacre - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_massacre
[24] Exclusive: Lee Atwater’s Infamous
1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy | The Nation
[25] [26] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] [48] [49] Culture Wars and Political
Distraction
https://brewminate.com/manufactured-outrage-how-political-elites-use-culture-wars-to-distract/
[27] [28] Microsoft Word - Hampton NHD body
pages.doc
https://www.chicagohistory.org/app/uploads/2023/08/4_Hampton_NHD_paper-CMHD-Example.pdf
[29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] Black Panther Fred Hampton
Created a "Rainbow Coalition" to Support Poor Americans | Teen Vogue
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/fred-hampton-black-panthers-rainbow-coalition-poor-americans
[50] [51] [52] [53] Opinion | We Should Listen to Rev
Barber on White Poverty and Multracial Organizing | Common Dreams
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/white-poverty-william-barber
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