Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from his blog Systemic Disorder.
In this essay the author looks at racism as suggested by the title: it is the structure or organization of society that fosters racism. Racism is just another way to divide workers from each other because the One Percents know that together workers present a formidable foe. In North America racism has been used as a prominent feature of class war because of the early history of European invasions on indigenous lands on this continent followed by the tremendous need for workers to transform the natural wealth that existed into commodities, and then into monetary wealth appropriated by the new capitalist class.
Thus, African-Americans played a huge role in the economic development of North America, and likewise in US political developments by their crucial role in the Civil War: the Lincoln administration was forced to emancipate and recruit African-Americans to fight against the slave-holding southern aristocracy in order to prevent the country from being split in two.