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As noted by Matthew Frye Jacobson and David Roediger, by restricting certain rights to mostly whites and denying them to African American and the indigenous, this cultivated a sense of superiority, even among white workers, and a feeling of cross-class “solidarity” between white workers and the white elite. Instead of viewing the world as divided between themselves and those who exploited them, many white workers soon accepted the premise that they, along with their white employers, shared in a struggle over resources against the “uncivilized” black and brown people.
Over the years, the contours and shape of whiteness would shift to meet the needs of the economic and political elite. When the Irish and Italian first arrived, they were discriminated against by other European Americans. However, after the Civil War, Northern and Southern elites understood that to avert rebellion from a white and black alliance, the Irish and newer European immigrants must be integrated into the mainstream. Establishment politicians started to encourage other white Americans to accept them and the Irish and Italian immigrants learned to distance themselves from African Americans by refusing to work with them and by supporting explicitly white supremacist political candidates.
full: https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/08/capitalism-and-the-reactionary-power-of-white-identity-politics/
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