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*Everything in America is about class, with race as a frequent proxy for class

Fixed that for you

Judging by the color of one's skins is one of the easiest and oldest ways to discriminate. Only behind by the contents of one's genetalia. But the latter at least has a biological need to care for one another.

It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation. At least when someone looks at someone who "looks like them" but is poorer, they see "potential" (there's a name for this effect, but I forget). But the end goal is getting theirs first and foremost.

True, but this effect tends to diminish at the highest levels of wealth.

At lower levels you have the “labor aristocracy” effect, which gives the more well-off workers a material stake in racism. And this division is useful to prevent organization.

> the end goal is getting theirs first and foremost

Seconded

Its also about language and colloquialisms. If you grow up poor, but go to a school with many wealthy children, you will learn to speak the "language" of the wealthy, which is, in my opinion, what mostly explains the "having potential" that the ruling class will see in your as you enter adulthood.

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