re: #502 HappyWarrior

People always need a scapegoat. That’s the story of racism anywhere and anytime. Want to justify lynching and castrating black men? Claim that black men rape white women even though it was white slave owners raping women slaves and destroying slave families. Want to rationalize tough economic times and losing WWI? Blame the Jews. And it goes on and on. I remember when I took US history in college, my professor said that Bacon’s Rebellion, an event that I think few Americans remember from history class was one of the first important events in early US history because it showed how the powers to be will find a scapegoat to justify discriminating against the other.

Though it must also be noted that Bacon and his followers favored the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans from Virginia. Both sides of that affair acted in large part out of bigotry.