A few things.
One is this quote by LBJ
"I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it," he said. "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
The other is the lyrics to this song, often played on Country Western radio stations (i.e. the home I grew up in) when I was a kid in the 70's, made popular by Roy Clark and Johnny Cash:
I Never Picked Cotton Lyrics
I never picked cotton
But my mother did and my brother did
And my sister did and my daddy died young
Workin' in the coal mine
When I was just a baby too little for a cotton sack
I played in the dirt while the others worked till they couldn't straighten their backs
And I made myself a promise when I was big enough to run
That I'd never stay a single day in that Oklahoma sun
And I never picked cotton
But my mother did and my brother did
And my sister did and my daddy died young
Workin' in the coal mine
Folks said I grew up early and in the farm that couldn't hold me then
So I stole ten bucks and a pickup truck and I never went back again
And it was fast cars and whiskey long haired girls and fun
I had everything that money could bring and I took it all with a gun
But I never picked cotton
But my mother did and my brother did
And my sister did and my daddy died young
Workin' in the coal mine
I
t was Saturday night in Memphis when a redneck grabbed my shirt
And when he said go back in your cotton sack I let 'im dyin' in the dirt
They'd take me in the mornin' to the gallows just outside
And in the time I've got there ain't a hullava lot that I can look back on with pride
But I never picked cotton
But my mother did and my brother did
And my sister did and my daddy died young
Workin' in the coal mine
This sentiment was extremely true of the people of my father's generation, who grew up poor and struggling during the Great Depression. Just about every single thing in the world was working against them. Except the color of their skin. Why else would they work so hard to preserve the color line?
It started changing with the Civil Rights Movement and the Boomers who grew up during that time and who raised the next generation, and they the next. Almost none of my parents' generation remove and we Boomers are on our way out.
Vestiges remain of those of us and our descendants who believe that we earned what we have through a lot of hard work and sacrifice. And we did. We just tend to not see how rules were written to make it easier for us and easier for us to not see the invisible hands that smoothed our way, and to call that the hard work of our parents and grandparents. And to ignore that the rules were written to disadvantage those who did not have the good sense to be born with white skin. Or Asian, for the more modern among us.
To be extremely honest, what I think is changing things more and more quickly than anything else is when our kids and grandkids have children with people who do not have the same level of European ancestry as we do. It takes a lot more to look down on your grandchildren than it does to look down on that family who moved in around the corner.
Trump and his spawned followers: they are the dying gasp of white supremacy.