Earlier US racism was openly championed by identifiable elites and institutions

Evidence

When analyzing earlier periods of US history, it is easy to identify who was a racist and who was the victim of racism. The Europeans who ordered the murder of Native Americans, who stole their land, and forced them on the “Trail of Tears” and into community blight on reservations were racist. The owners of plantations (what I call “master-enslavers”1) who bought and sold, raped and exploited, Africans and African-Americans, were racists, as were the poor whites who served as overseers and “slave-catchers.” The so-called scientists who classified blacks at the bottom of the “chain of being,” suggesting they had smaller brains, the men had bigger genitals, the women were more able to handle childbirth - these were the racists. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1811

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the term ‘master-enslavers’ for plantation owners, a deliberate reframing of ‘masters’ more accurately as enslavers.