The History of American Politics and the Politics of Race and Immigration

The two main political parties took different positions on both of the big schisms over 250 years of American history. One was anti-immigrant but pro black, in inverted commas,. The other party was literally the opposite, that was anti black, deeply racist but broadly immigrant by which they meant pro white immigrants. This is a really important idea in terms of your big picture explanation of why American politics has been polarized and also as we're going to come on to why it's polarized in a more dangerous way now.