Defining the social status of the colonized by reference to race had two important disadvantages. First, it homogenized those colonized into a racially oppressed majority. Second, it was difficult to legitimate this mode of control because it was unmoored from any historical memory. Tribal rule at least could pay lip service to historical custom. Racism, then, tended to accentuate the colonial context of rule rather than assuage it. Its thrust was not to divide and rule but to unite. Tribalism had none of these disadvantages. Tribal identification and administration would fragment the native
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