It’s a little chicken and egg, I think. Racist ideas were used to justify slavery, but it’s also possible that racist ideas played into the beginning of enslavement of Africans as well.

These days, I think it’s just a matter of people become bigoted through largely osmosis, and the conservative mindset is fertile ground for bigoted messaging. Political and economic elites, then, focus on culture war bullshit because it works as an effective smokescreen to prevent the news from focusing on billionaires’ (effectively) war crimes.

Big ol feedback loop of bigotry, unfortunately.