White solidarity as a racial identity was a myth obscuring shared exploitations

Evidence

However, in the lower orders, where the mist was thickest and where received wisdom has taught us to expect Blackness, the contemporary spectrum was more complex: the natives of the New World obtained a savage red, European labor a mottled gray. Above their heads it was a simpler matter: the ruling classes stood in dramatic, white relief. But between ourselves and the specter of that American past are the historical and racial fables that obscure the related exploitations and oppressions of African, European, Asian, and Amerindian peoples during the intervening 200 years. As a means of obliterating these events, the myth of white solidarity arose and came to dominate American sensibility. It was for the most part a lie but a terribly seductive one. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 427

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s project on the Black radical tradition’s origins, framing racial categories as colonial imposed fictions. — connects to: Racial ideology obscured America’s class divisions with a myth of unity.; The Irish were the prototype white servants later absorbed into a white racial identity; White refusal to release the past drove blacks toward racial pride — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 444 (+8 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 427

Broader Connections

• Whiteness and blackness are each lived as mythic, opposing existential essences #corroborates (0.70) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 165
• White refusal to release the past drove blacks toward racial pride #complicates (0.60) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 444
• White frustration with the Negro drives white prohibitions against blacks #corroborates (0.55)