US slavery’s bipolar color caste recruited the lowest whites into policing status

Evidence

Slavery in the United States was part of a bipolar system of color caste, in which even the lowliest of “whites” enjoyed a status superior in crucial respects to that of the most exalted of “blacks.” As members of the privileged group, white workers organized to defend their caste status, even while striving to improve their condition as workers. They prohibited free Afro-Americans from competing with them for jobs, in effect curtailing their right to choose among masters (a right which contemporary labor activists declared the only essential distinction between the free worker and the slave). — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 361

Categorization

• XREF: The bipolar-caste mechanism parallels why reclassification into a protected class demands that someone else bear the demoted role. — connects to: Whiteness as a racial hierarchy predated and shaped American slavery discourse. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1701; Racism gave white American workers a fictive status compensating their limited material well-being — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 942; Planters saw slave-protection reforms as a dagger aimed at whites (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Poor white leaders were bound to planters and repelled from slaves #expands (0.85)
• Racism gave white American workers a fictive status compensating their limited material well-being #corroborates (0.82) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 942
• Whiteness as a racial hierarchy predated and shaped American slavery discourse. #corroborates (0.75) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1701
• Planters saw slave-protection reforms as a dagger aimed at whites #corroborates (0.72)