How Colonial Elites Created Whiteness to Divide Poor People

The whole history of America is the history of rich white men telling not rich white people that their enemies are black and brown.

It starts in the colonies of what would become the United States.

Let's remember, during the colonial period, mid-1600s, there was no such thing as white people.

I know some people who are now called white find that shocking because they think whiteness is real.

But whiteness was created. Europeans didn't call themselves white.

We didn't call ourselves white. We weren't all members of one big happy family. Are you kidding?

Have you studied the history of Europe? The history of Europe was about killing each other.

That's what we did in Europe. We just killed each other.

Before we figured out there were other people to kill, we just killed each other.

I mean, that was the history of Europe. The English hated the Irish, right?

Northern Italians didn't even think that Southern Italians were Italians.

The Germans hated everybody, and everybody hated their ass right back.

There was no team called white, no race called white, but all of a sudden, in the middle of the 1600s, there was. Why?

Why was it suddenly necessary to create this thing called the white race?

Well, because rich people can count, that's why.

And so rich folks looked around, the ones that owned all the land, you know, in the colonies, the colonial elite looked around, and they realized something, that they were heavily outnumbered by African enslaved folks, by European indentured servants who were just one level above a slave,

or other Europeans who weren't technically indentured servants, but they were still peasants, didn't have any money, didn't have any land.

And they could do the math. They added it up, and they were like, "Damn, we gotta figure out a way to split these folks apart from one another, or they're gonna rise up and take our stuff."