Sixteenth-century aristocrats knew the masses precisely while mythologizing them

Evidence

It was a form of this notion that Count Gobineau revived in the mid-nineteenth century, extending its conceptualization of superiority so as to include elements of the bourgeoisie. The nobilities of the sixteenth century, however, proved to be more circumspect about “the masses” than their genealogical legends might imply. They did not become victims of their own mythic creations. When it came to the structures of the state, their knowledge of the social, cultural, and historical compositions of the masses was exquisitely refined. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 188

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the central thesis that racial ideology is a real, practical instrument of rule rather than mere myth — the ‘whose reality’ question the Black radical tradition confronts.