This was an important book to me because it made the point that racism is a function of class, not the other way 'round. In the United States, the dominant race has a class system whereby the lowest members can feel better about themselves because however bad they have it, at least they're in the hierarchy... unlike those immediately-recognizable people who aren't. From the Russians I know, what's important isn't so much how much money you make, but the fact that you aren't Asian-looking. I know a Muscovite who has utter contempt for everybody not from Moscow and she's the palest girl I've ever met. I know a girl from Samarkand who has utter contempt for Muscovites... but her dad is a fighter pilot from Kiev and her mom is Uzbek. She grew up a white-trash half-breed out in the sticks while my Muscovite friend has a VK feed full of models.

"Seems like we like our Africans hungry and corrupt."

Racism in the US is a little complicated but fear of the 'other' is probably the best simple explanation. A hundred twenty years ago the Irish weren't white, Italians weren't white. White for all intents and purposes was white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. You're hard pressed to identify someone who's grandparents were Irish or Italian today. They're white enough. I can possibly see Latinos becoming white enough in a hundred years as they integrate and marry white Americans. Ted fucking Cruz is Cuban when it suits him politically. But blackness doesn't integrate the same way. If you're half black you still look very black. And the genetic dominance of African features is a random and unfortunate continuing identifier of otherness. At least that's my take.