De jure segregation served to unite white populations facing internal conflict

Evidence

Anthony Marx (1998) has argued recently that political elites resorted to racist exclusion, most notably in the form of de jure segregation, to consolidate whites in the face of intrawhite conflict (Civil War in the USA, the Boer War in South Africa), national instability, and potential demise in power. So de jure segregation apparently was fashioned to unite whites in these societies. By contrast, Brazil suffered no internalized conflict among whites, and so there was no need to resort to segregation of blacks as a way of uniting a divided nation identified with whiteness. In Brazil, discrimination accordingly assumed less overt forms. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1751

Categorization

• XREF: Builds directly on Marx’s argument about racist exclusion as elite nation-building strategy — extends the classic ‘white unity through Black exclusion’ thesis to a Brazil comparator. — connects to: White workers cemented segregation to protect their labor advantages — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1459; Desegregation taught working-class whites that self-interest trumps community loyalty — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 191; Segregationists recruited businessmen as their moderate alliance cracked — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 440 (+3 more)
• QUESTION: Worth probing: does the Marx thesis (top-down elite imposition of segregation) hold up against bottom-up accounts in US historiography of Jim Crow?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1751