In almost every society in history the rich, and usually, but not always, lighter skinned people, needed a larger class of poor people to exploit in order to make their rich lifestyles comfortable and profitable. This almost always went hand-in-hand with corruption, and with a well paid police force or army to keep the poor folk in their place.

In America, before the Civil War, the Democrats were the party of the slave owners, and the poor white boys who died fighting to protect their honor to be better than Black people. Since, 1967, and the passage of the Voting Rights Act, those people now own the Republican Party. They need an underclass to work for low wages in order to keep making huge profits. They also need to keep a lot of poor white people afraid of Black people in order to stay in power.