The argument offered by Noel Ignatiev in this case seems to be pedantic and misses readily the issue that is politically drawn from the conclusion that settler economies (in fact the development of the capitalist system as a mode of production altogether) was reliant on the binding social relationship of chattel slavery, that the Atlantic system and the triangle trade gave basis for the organization of a new mode of production.

That a mode of production is based upon inderdependent social relations to the means of production, that interdependency defines the pre-given totality of a system is just simply an abstraction that can't possibily be incorrect. Likewise the labor of finance capital on Wall Street, of the banking system is also fundamental to the function of the whole world economy. Likewise the labor of the police, the professional army of Empire, the bureaucratic comprador regimes of the Third World are all a necessary organizational and systemic necessity for a mode of production to reproduce itself.

The deeper meaning to Sakai here is essentially raising what is in fact invisible, that within a developing capitalist mode of production and its ascendancy to the world stage, it was based upon a mode of production of chattel-slavery, the dead labor of a kidnapped people who have been turned into property into proletarianized subjects, who are criminalized people, who in even in other respects returned to chattel property through a carceral capitalist mechanicism. The affect within a section of the masses, a majority of settlers is in fact "privilege" that was material in fact and had a basis in the actual project of settlerism itself. A child working the mines in fact may themselves or even their next generation a right to land through genocide, a right to ascend to the ranks of a labor aristocrat through the accumulative process itself. White masses rebelled, certainly, and in some respects had collaborated with Empire and the basis of this is not simply a "false consciousness" but a real material relationship they had with the developing productive forces and their social relationship to other sections of labor on regional, national, and world scale.

That today sections of white America still benefit from the most depraved parts of a white supremacist and imperialist system is undeniable - one merely needs to throw a stone at any community around a prison, any UFT in an urban community, any armaments factory.

In terms and regard to the term "settler" - this becomes a categorical issue of importance and must rely upon political issue of right and relationship to state power. The descedants of African people are no means "settlers" in the same regard as the European - their basis for introduction to the Western Hemisphere was by means of kidnapping, through contract of parties, between factors and African coastal despotism, was the reduction of humanity to a subhumanity. They had no right, no humanity in the terms of "universal" reason of European law. This of course very distinctive even to the indentured servant of the colonies.

The Chinese coolie, again, was in fact in the same terms was a deeply proletarianized subject, perhaps even subaltern - reduced to nothing but his right to labor, and sometimes not even then. Taken away from him was right to even family, the white settler nation attempted to even deny him the right to reproduction (literally denying him the subject of even proletariat, outside even the outside of body politics).

With the indian people of North America much can be said that is likewise true - the history, simple - in constant defense of their mode of production which sat outside the settler project, they were murdered off in large parts. Where they had assimilated, they were pushed from without of the body politics as the development of national identity and consciousness of "America" meant their very exclusion. Pushed into reservations to be stripped of a voice, to be made to live precariously in relationship to a territory.

With indigenous and Mexican communities of central and south America, it needs to be assessed in its particularity rather than reliant upon an analysis of the social-formations of United States and Canada. If you're speaking of Mexican populations (Chicano and Tejano) in the United States itself, this is in fact an altogether different history - in fact many of them are themselves the descendents of a settler population or even have a mixed descendency, but that settler population was not in relationship to the United States but to Spain and then later, Mexico. There is actually much of debate and contradiction within this frame of questions (between Chicano and Tejano people in relationship to land questions of indigenous people); I believe there can only be such resolvement of that issue under a socialist dictatorship which can eliminate the national oppression of the white supremacist state first and foremost.

Lastly -

"As many people have pointed out, class is not a listing of individuals by occupation but a process whereby some people come to see they have common interests, and that these interests include the building of a new society. "

There is one thing I am in fact in agreement with - that understanding class needs to be understood within a process, but however Ignatiev is systematically incorrect. Understanding a class system can only be understood with a general historical process of development of the means of production in relationship to social relationships. "Consciousness" of people is in fact a secondary aspect to this, that is a matter of class struggle. The distinction is one which is between a Hegelian praxis of Marxism vs. its scientific mode of thought. In fact, IMO, such a Hegelian praxis of Marxism gives basis for the simplistic slogan of "white and black, unite and fight." In fact the only way of rationalizing then an authentic anti-racist politics from this in fact based in either a moralism or a teological conception of "interests" of workers. It seems in this jotted work the latter is the case for Noel Ignatiev. He states:

"Standard bourgeois economics teaches that a job is property. Settlers shares that view, as well as the outlook of the white worker who thinks that a racial monopoly of the “better” jobs is worth defending. Who could be more subordinated to capital, more blinded to proletarian class interests?"

I.e. the white worker is haunted by a false consciousness, that his real material interests are for him to "liberate" themselves from capital; however this is in fact itself the thought of the categorization of class (into its two famous camps). If proletarianization is in fact a concrete process, then it should be understood within its concrete historical actuality as opposed from the standpoint of the abstract of Capital vs. Labor. We should consider the actual dynamic process of a pre-given complex whole of particular modes of production, their integration to create a capitalist world system, and what is the definite politicization of that (what is class struggle given these dynamics) in the world today. The white worker had thought his interest was to collaborate with US Imperialism, to get two cars, a suburban house, become a world citizen in a country where its native inhabitant has no right...they might have not been decieving themselves at all.

To avoid confusion - body politic should be singular as opposed to plural, the distinction renders a completely different meaning, so I apologize if I confused anyone.