Race relations in the Western world is a game of chess, and Black people are its pawns. Socially liberal elites have always used Black people as an accessory in their struggle for power with Conservatives. Social Liberals use the Black Community as a model for their interpretations of counter-culture, wielding Black thought and using Black bodies as collateral for times when White Nationalist Rage became too overwhelming to quell. This has happened for ages to the detriment of Black folks unfortunately caught in the ideological fray.
In the early stages of Reconstruction, the Union experimented with the rapid enfranchisement of socially mobile Blacks, usually ‘Mulattoes,’ supporting them in becoming business owners and politicians all across the disgruntled former-Confederacy. Did they enforce such radically progressive policies to be just and fair, or to enact some proto-Affirmative Action policy to give Black people a leg up? There is enough evidence to asset that they actually did it to antagonize the antebellum South. White people across every region in America internalized the erroneous belief that people of African descent were the most inferior race. Therefore, Black people, a race of former slaves, getting the chance to live and even thrive among their former masters was seen as the South’s greatest shame. The North delighted in this. The now defunct Confederacy was horrified. The empowerment of Negroes and Mulattoes was clearly a punishment for the South’s treachery. And Reconstruction was a complete and utter failure that just fueled the South’s chagrin more than ever before. Fear of Reconstruction Politics fueled the creation of Jim Crow’s cruelest features such as Racial etiquette, Race Riots, and the blatant denial of due process to any Black person accused of a crime. to this day the legacy of that rhetoric is maintained in the Conservative White’s quest for America’s greatness to return.
This phenomenon transcends nationality. Racial code knows no border, afterall.
Post WWI (pre-Hitler), The French punished Germany for their war crimes by hiring Franc-Afrique soldiers in addition to White soldiers to monitor the Rhine. Local Germans fabricated rumors about African soldiers raping their women (sound familiar) even though most of the Black soldier-German woman relationships were consensual. The offspring of these relationships were called Rhineland Bastards. Hitler used hateful rhetoric against these children and France’s cruelty in empowering Black men to gain political favor. He followed through on his promise for revenge when he gained power. These mixed children were dealt with harshly during the Holocaust, enduring extermination and sterilization.
When White elites use universally understood racial codes in order to pervert other white people’s access to consolidated white power, these things happen. Race relations, in effect, become a game rather than something that is supposed to be treated like a fragile vase.
