If people have an interest in their relative standing, independently of the absolute level of their wages, or if a reduction of the latter can be compensated for by an improvement in the former, then it is easy to see how crackers and white ladies can have an interest in the suppression of wetbacks, mandingos, and crack ho bitches. Gov Pete Wilson's efforts to cut public aid to illegal aliens, affirmative action and welfare were indeed popular after all; Clinton was elected despite his softness on those issues and if Perot hadn't been around the first time, Clinton's (incorrectly) perceived softness would have buried him.
Now it is true that Michael Reich throws a wrench in this; he shows from data from major metropolitan areas that as whites gain relatively to blacks, working class whites lose relatively to upper class ones. But what is appealing about racism (e.g., Props 187, 209, reductions in ghetto aid, weakening of Title VII) is that it allows a certain group of workers to enjoy some improvement--even if it is only the compensation of some greater relative standing vis a vis other workers-- without having to undertake the most arduous and dangerous of tasks: an assault on our own ruling class.
This is the real short term benefits whites get from racism. It is the immensity and the danger of the practical task of class war which induces all of us-- white, black, yellow and brown--to seek safe, authoritarian solutions to our social degradation. In this regard, we all seek the kind of good (relative standing, cultural restoration, national pride) the achievement of which is possible simply through support for relatively safe authoritarian politics. The maniacal black turnout to the Million Man March then is a variant on the same psychological propensity. Underneath it all, we are all--yellow, brown, black and white--terrorized by the bossman or Mr Charlie; that's also why some of us want to believe that the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO will be able to doctor our condition for us.
best, rakesh