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America's polarization is likely deliberately promoted by the elites. When a society is occupied by infighting over wedge issues it's not looking at the big picture and power can be more easily consolidated. In Rwanda, the colonialists arbitrarily split the population into Hutus and Tutsi "ethnicities" then showed favoritism to one group. They eventually got infighting which diverted energy from possible insurgence.

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Chomsky said this:

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

The colonialists emphasized the split for political gains, and there must have been some arbitrariness in assigning each person to exactly one category, but they certainly didn't pull the distinction out of thin air. Just look at the pictures in the infobox in their respective Wikipedia articles.

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