The history of racial oppression is not a story of misunderstanding or ignorance—it is a story of deliberate invention and manipulation by profiteering elites. From the 15th‑century Portuguese aristocrats who pioneered the transatlantic slave trade, to the colonial elites of Virginia who invented “whiteness” to divide workers, to modern policymakers who deploy racial tropes in seemingly neutral policies, elites have consistently orchestrated systems of division to secure wealth and power.
The Portuguese Aristocracy and the Birth of Racial Slavery
In the early 1400s, Portuguese aristocrats sought profit through exploration and conquest along the West African coast. Chroniclers such as Gomes Eanes de Zurara recorded the first slave raids in 1441, when captains captured Africans for sale in Portugal (Lowcountry Digital History Initiative, n.d.). Papal bulls issued in 1452 and 1455 by Pope Nicholas V granted Portugal the right to enslave non‑Christians, embedding the idea that African identity itself justified enslavement (Romanus Pontifex, 1455/2023).
This was not a discovery of racial difference but the orchestration of a myth: that Blackness equaled enslavement. Portuguese elites profited immensely, and in doing so, they laid the foundation for a global racial hierarchy (Caldeira, 2024).
What makes this construction even more insidious is what modern science has revealed: 99.9% of human genes are the same across all populations. The biological differences elites claimed as justification for enslavement and exploitation were never real—they were manufactured lies, disproven by genetics centuries later.
The Invention of Whiteness and the Persistence of Hierarchies
By the late 17th century, elites in Virginia faced a crisis when Bacon’s Rebellion (1676) revealed the potential for solidarity between enslaved Africans and European indentured servants. Terrified of unified resistance, colonial lawmakers deliberately constructed the category of “whiteness.” By granting poor Europeans limited privileges while permanently enslaving Africans, elites created a false sense of superiority that fractured solidarity (Berlin, 1998; Facing History, 2016).
Yet even within this framework, not all Europeans were immediately embraced as “white.” Irish and later Eastern European immigrants, including Russians, were often excluded from full membership in whiteness. They were depicted as inferior, criminal, or incapable of self‑government—rationalizations elites used to justify their exploitation as cheap labor (Ignatiev, 1995). Over time, however, these groups were gradually folded into whiteness, not because of any change in biology, but because elites recognized the utility of expanding the category to shore up racial hierarchies against Black and Indigenous people.
This entitlement of white citizenry—constructed from the beginning as a political tool—has remained central to the maintenance of elite power. In the modern United States, it is reinforced through conspiracy theories like the so‑called “Great Replacement.” Originating in Europe but embraced by white nationalists in the U.S., replacement theory falsely claims that elites are conspiring to “replace” white citizens with immigrants and people of color (The Conversation, 2024; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2025). At rallies such as Charlottesville in 2017, chants of “You will not replace us” revealed how deeply this myth resonates with those who see whiteness as an entitlement to dominance.
That fearmongering collapses under the weight of genetic truth: if 99.9% of our DNA is shared, then the divisions elites insist upon are political fictions, not biological facts.
From Overt Hierarchies to Subtle Tropes and Coded Policies
As centuries passed, the strategies of profiteering elites evolved. Where once they relied on explicit racial categories, they now deploy subtler tools: racial tropes and “race‑neutral” policies that produce racialized outcomes. Terms like “inner city,” “welfare dependency,” “illegal alien,” or “gang violence” appear neutral but function as proxies for communities of color (Pfeiffer & Hu, 2022). These tropes allow elites to frame people of color as pathological while justifying punitive interventions.
The “War on Drugs,” for example, was framed as a universal fight against crime but disproportionately targeted Black and Latino communities through mandatory minimums and aggressive policing (Alexander, 2010). Housing debates invoke fears of “declining property values” to mask racial exclusion. Immigration enforcement provides another clear case: critics have documented how ICE raids overwhelmingly target Black and Brown migrants, while white/European immigrant communities—such as Irish in Boston or Russian in Brighton Beach—are rarely subjected to the same large‑scale raids, reflecting selective enforcement aligned with expanded boundaries of whiteness (NewsOne, 2025). At the same time, litigation has shown ICE’s inconsistent treatment of Russian‑speaking asylum seekers—what attorneys termed a “Russian Detention & Deterrence Scheme”—underscoring the arbitrariness of enforcement within broader patterns that still disproportionately criminalize migrants of color (Louisiana Illuminator, 2025).
In this way, the racial hierarchies first codified in colonial law and later reinforced through white entitlement and replacement theory are now sustained through the quieter language of policy and bureaucracy. The vocabulary has changed, but the underlying tyranny remains.
Continuity of Tyranny
From the Portuguese aristocrats who orchestrated the myth of race, to the colonial elites who invented whiteness, to modern policymakers who weaponize racial tropes, the pattern is clear: profiteering elites manufacture division to maintain control. Race was never a biological truth—it was a political invention. And while the methods have shifted from papal decrees to coded laws, from slave patrols to mass incarceration, the purpose has remained constant: to fracture solidarity and preserve elite power.
The fact that 99.9% of our genes are the same is not just a scientific finding—it is a moral indictment. It exposes the fraud at the heart of racial hierarchy and underscores that the divisions we live under were engineered, not natural.
Call to Action: Reclaiming Truth, Rebuilding Solidarity
If elites could invent race to divide, then communities can dismantle it to unite. The lesson of history is not despair but clarity: oppression is engineered, which means it can be undone.
• Expose the lies: Teach and repeat the truth that race is not biological but political, and that 99.9% of our DNA is shared.
• Challenge coded policies: Demand accountability for laws and enforcement practices that disproportionately target communities of color while shielding white immigrant groups.
• Rebuild solidarity: Just as elites fractured alliances between Africans and indentured Europeans in the 1600s, today’s movements must rebuild multiracial coalitions that refuse to be divided by fearmongering.
• Reclaim science: Insist that knowledge and discovery serve people and planet, not profiteering elites. Science must be a tool of liberation, not domination.
The tyranny of profiteering elites has endured for centuries because it thrives on division. The antidote is solidarity rooted in truth. If 99.9% of our genes are the same, then the struggle for justice is not about erasing difference but about refusing to let false hierarchies define our future.
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References
Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. The New Press.
Berlin, I. (1998). Many thousands gone: The first two centuries of slavery in North America. Harvard University Press.
Caldeira, A. (2024). Portuguese slave trade. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.903
Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2025, August 23). Replacement theory. https://www.britannica.com/topic/replacement-theory
Facing History. (2016). Bacon’s Rebellion: Inventing black and white. Facing History and Ourselves. https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/inventing-black-white
Fortner, M. J., & Scanlon, C. (2023). Crime, the dangers of racial tropes, and the limits of racial metaphors. Logos Journal. https://logosjournal.com/article/crime-the-dangers-of-racial-tropes-and-the-limits-of-racial-metaphors/
Ignatiev, N. (1995). How the Irish became white. Routledge.
Louisiana Illuminator. (2025, February 7). Immigrants sue ICE over alleged ‘Russian Detention & Deterrence Scheme’. https://lailluminator.com/2025/02/07/ice-russia/
Lowcountry Digital History Initiative. (n.d.). Pope Nicolas V and the Portuguese slave trade. College of Charleston. https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/african_laborers_for_a_new_emp/pope_nicolas_v_and_the_portugu
NewsOne. (2025, January 27). ‘Racist’ ICE raids ignore European, white migrants, critics say. https://newsone.com/5886540/ice-raids-white-undocumented-immigrants/
Pfeiffer, D., & Hu, X. (2022). Racial code words: A technology of racialization and racism. American Association of Law Schools. https://am.aals.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2023/01/pfeiffer_and_hu__racial_code_words_221
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