IN THE Sunday Globe Ideas section, Farah Stockman’s thoughtful piece about the echoes of busing concludes: “It’s as if we’ve learned nothing at all’’ (“Donald Trump, Black Lives Matter, and the echoes of busing,’’ Dec. 27).

But there is greater significance to the story than her claim “that history is more like a tug of war between demographic rivals over finite resources: Jobs. Money. Power.’’

Who controls the “Jobs, Money, Power’’ these “rivals’’ fight over? And why are these resources seen as “finite’’? Another article in the Sunday Globe cites a recent study showing America’s 20 wealthiest people now own more than the bottom 152 million. The wealth is there, but owned and controlled by fewer and fewer people (“A Wall Street-Main Street split,’’ Page A1, Dec. 28).

Throughout US history, the economic elite has maintained its power by encouraging these “tugs of war.’’ Racism and nativism go way back. Donald Trump is part of long line of racist right-wing populists: the Know Nothing Party, the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch Society, and followers of Father Charles Coughlin.

With billionaire Trump channeling the fears of marginalized and angry whites, we have come to a profound moment of choice about the future and soul of our country. We can confront the historical roots of today’s inequality, which began with the hard fact that indigenous and black lives did not matter; that scapegoating people as the threatening Other was always used to protect wealth and property. Or we can ignore this history and continue to devolve into a more unequal and polarized nation.

Laura Foner

Jamaica Plain