Cooperation and racial suspicion coexisted on the frontier

Evidence

What could be characterized as a Hobbesian state of nature prevailed, rendered less extreme perhaps only by the force of necessarily cooperative reason on all sides. Cooperation, when not trumped by narrow selfinterest or salacious desire, more likely promotes a longer life than does belligerence. The common challenges of survival pulled people together, just as racially exacerbated suspicion kept conflict little more than a stone’s throw away. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1365

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Cross-racial cooperation can succeed despite divergent motives and interests — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 425