Apartheid does make poor whites Aristocrats
A common explanation of racism among white 99%ers is that poor southern whites want to have somebody to look down on. That formulation is in the ballpark but, in my view, overlooks the degree to which apartheid makes even poor whites a form of aristocrat, allowing them to both look down and to look up without shame.
I would put it this way... in apartheid, all whites actually are aristocrats. Being an aristocrat means that people have to do what you say, look down and bow when you pass, agree with your stupid views.
But a Duke is a commoner relative to the King. Lots of aristocrats had little money. Lots of aristocrats got pushed around by 'bigger' aristocrats. There were plenty of aristocrats who lost their property and lived off the charity of other aristocrats.
But they had a place in society that was not the bottom and could never be the bottom.
The Duke bows to the King and the commoner bows to the Duke. But the commoner also bows to the King.
Relative to the commoner the Duke is, functionally, the same as the King.
It is not just that an oppressed person wants someone to look down on. (As a battered child might take out his frustrations on a pet.) The Duke also looks up. He is like the King.
Some non-rich whites vote against their economic self-interest, but economics is not everything to people. Those non-rich whites do vote in their perceived social interest.
In their sense of society they are the same, socially, as the governor, vis-a-vis non-white people. Their desired apartheid elevates them in a very real sense.
Through the lens of apartheid, when you see the richest man in town standing next to a white tennant farmer the first thing you see is two white guys.
Huey Long's populist anthem was "Every Man a King." In the deep south in the 1930s that actually meant something... as long as you were white.
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