Yeah my hometown has this very class divide. My mother’s family was among the first Europeans to arrive and settle the island I grew up on in the Salish Sea. We are told lies that no natives lived on the island, yet when remodeling our downtown street we found a Salish grave. Subsequent waves of Dutch settlers arrived and built the settler towns on the island. Later the US Navy turned the island into a base where there’s an imported labor class (like my father, and maternal grandmother) and a class of European settlers who’s ancestors conquered and settled the land and now make millions off of land speculation. There’s a lot of “old money” Dutch folks with last names the same as our streets who all run real estate companies, are doctors, are dentists, are lawyers, their own bougie economy. My mother’s distant cousin was the last of their family name to sell his farm for a few million dollars, which was being turned into a suburban development when the 08 crash happened and sat an unfinished lot for years until the naval base expanded and brought new laborers to buy and rent that property.

My mother’s father abandoned my grandmother, my mother, and uncle, and the distant family “disowned” her when she married a black person, so the family wealth has been guarded through racism. They send their sons to be officers in the military. This is precisely why these people were let into America in the first place. As their home countries were being enclosed and the middle classes losing their land to wealthier landlords, the sons of the middle classes were sent to America to regain the family’s place on street signs. They were loyal to the Settler nation and remain loyal to it. Even when reduced to workers they have privileges over other workers (the Indigenous, Asian, Black, and Latino workers) for their proximity to the Settler nation.

These patterns explain much of the development of the American West.