Using race to divide labor is a time-proven capitalist tactic. Go back to Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, where the system was made explicit after the mixed-race uprising again the oligarchs of the time.
Fascinating. I grew up in rural Virginia. A little Known fact is that the vast majority of white settlers there were indentured and/or bonded, often convicts. The first Africans in 1619 were indentured as well. Horrifically, in the 1650s when the first African slaves were brought over, the elites pushed further changes in social norms that resulted in a significant worsening of treatment of the African indentured servants who had long since become free landowners and farmers. A formerly indentured, free black man had a prosperous farm a few miles from where I grew up. The courthouse there dates to the 1600s, and the records are there that show jealous white neighbors gradually stealing his land with impunity, starting at the time that slaves started becoming common. It is chilling looking at those documents standing in that building.