A Marxist sociologist has argued that racism stems
from the class struggle that is unique to the capitalist
system—that racial prejudice is generated by capitalists
as a means of controlling workers. His thesis works
relatively well when applied to discrimination against
Blacks in the United States, but his definition of racial
prejudice as "racially-based negative prejudgments
against a group generally accepted as a race in any
given region of ethnic competition," can be interpreted
as also including hostility toward such ethnic groups as
the Chinese in California and the Jews in medieval
Europe. However, since prejudice against these latter
peoples was not inspired by capitalists, he has to reason
that such antagonisms were not really based on race.
He disposes thusly (albeit unconvincingly) of both the
intolerance faced by Jews before the rise of capitalism
and the early twentieth-century discrimination against
Oriental people in California, which, inconveniently,
was instigated by workers.