["The treatment of the four major non-European populations by whites in the United States over the course of the nineteenth century shows the way in which an expanding white supremacy scripted people into specific economic and psychological roles. "Next to the case of the black race within our bosum, that of the red on our borders is the problem baffling to the policy of the country," former president James Madison explained in 1826. Slavery in the nation's "bosum" made anti-Black racism inescapably intimate and domestic; the relative independence of indigenous peoples on the "frontiers" caused open warfare that led to the decimation of Indian peoples and the reservation policy. These racist practices and ideas were then extended to other non-European people. Sam Houston explained glibly when he took over Texas that the United States had always cheated Indians, and Mexicans were no better than Indians. Planters in Hawaii expected to find "coolie" labor "far more certain, systemic, and economic than that of the native," as one explained. There, planters systematically diversified immigrant populations, paying Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans different wages for the same work to prevent class solidarity. "By employing different nationalities, there is less danger of collusion among laborers and the employers [are able to] secure better discipline," a planter explained. On the U.S. mainland, the Chinese were identified with the already developed stereotypes used on African Americans and were called "nagurs." The Chinese were also viewed as quieter and more intelligent and generally more fitted for an industrial labor force. By playing off national and racial groups, capitalism created not one but a series of racisms that buttressed each other and a series of working classes that allowed people of color to be played off against one another. It was a potent strategy."]
Mab Segrest, Memoir of a Race Traitor, The New Press, 1994
