Sociology: How "Pacification" based states work
Ethnic conflict is a bit more complex than the "racists scapegoating minorities".
Sometimes oppressed minorities can even become the oppressor class or its supporters.
A state is controlled by those who take power, and for an oppressive state to hold onto power it needs dedicated supporters.
Minority groups (ethnic, religious, cultural, etc) can easily become radicalized in perceived self defense from a larger group, and that's why a hypothetical corrupt state might appeal to minorities rather than majorities.
A great reading on the subject, from the imperialist perspective:
Native Son
A Tunisia-born Jew and French officer who fought the Berbers in Algeria pioneered the counterinsurgency warfare still used in Iraq and Afghanistan
David Galula, a Tunisia-born Jew and French military officer who has been dead more than 40 years, was the greatest single influence on American counterinsurgency practice in Iraq and Afghanistan after Gen. David Petraeus. The idea that winning the population’s loyalty, not winning territory, is the key to quelling an insurgency has roots dating back 200 years to the Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz, but Galula was the conduit through which the U.S. Army learned it. The notion of active patrolling of hostile cities, of dispersing U.S. forces in small groups rather than stationing them on large bases, the insistence on getting to know the local culture—all these are Galula’s ideas.
His precepts, developed from his two years as a company commander in Algeria between 1956 and 1958, became American doctrine through two books. The authors of the U.S. Army counterinsurgency field manual FM 3-24, of whom the most famous is Petraeus, cite one: “Of the many books that were influential in the writing of Field Manual 3-24, perhaps none was as important as David Galula’s Counterinsurgency Warfare.” But Galula’s other book, Pacification in Algeria, written for the RAND Corporation in 1962 and classified until 2005, is the more useful book for the soldier and the more interesting for the military historian.
Pacification gives a nearly week-by-week account of how Galula implemented his theories in a tiny, mountainous area of Algeria’s Kabyle region. The Kabyle is 100 percent Berber, to use the old word—or Amazigh, to use the word Berbers call themselves—and it was a hotbed of the insurgency. Galula admits that the two officers who followed him in command were both quickly killed by the insurgents.
...Galula, along with every French commander in Algeria I’ve read about, missed the elephant in the room: If the French had been able to drive a wedge between the roughly 30 percent of Algerians who are Berbers and the Arab majority, they might have stopped the insurgency in its tracks.
There are at least three obvious points of tension between North African Berbers/Amazigh and Arabs. The first is over the historical fact of the Arab conquest. Every Berber I have met has told me that Amazigh were the original inhabitants of North Africa and that all of that land was once theirs. As one Libyan Amazigh told me, “I’m tired of hearing about the Palestinians and how the Jews took their land. What about how the Arabs took our land?”
There is also the fact that the official language of all the North African countries is Arabic—yet in Morocco 60 percent of the population are Tamazight or Berber-speaking, in Algeria 30 percent, and in Libya perhaps 10 percent. In most of North Africa, the Arabophone majority has suppressed or (in the case of Qaddafi’s Libya) outright prohibited the use of Tamazight, a language that is estimated to be anywhere from 2,200 to 3,000 years old; its tiffinagh script has more than 30 letters, differing somewhat from region to region, and some of them look like ancient Greek.
The third clear point of conflict is religious. Many Amazigh are at pains to distinguish between their moderate Islam and the intolerance sometimes found among their Arab neighbors...
Rwanda:
Wikileaks referencing website talking about the emails and internal dynamics of Rwanda, as observed by diplomats post-genocide:
...The cable’s title is “ETHNICITY IN RWANDA - - -WHO GOVERNS THE COUNTRY?” It’s dated August 5, 2008. Its overall classification is “SECRET,” second only to “TOP SECRET,” and “NOFORN,” no distribution to foreign nationals. Those parts of it which describe Rwandan reality in general terms are marked “CONFIDENTIAL, NOFORN.” Passages naming specific individuals holding various positions in Rwanda are marked “SECRET, NOFORN.” The latter seem to explain why the cable is marked “SECRET, NOFORN” overall.
“Tutsi refugees and expatriates have told me for many years that Rwanda is headed by a Tutsi elite, but this description by a US official is far more extreme than anything they had ever led me to imagine.”
...“The new Minister of State for Education told 750 secondary school headmasters that 80 percent of them were "masterminds of genocide ideology.”
Ethnic Identity -- Used as a Shield?
- (C/NF) As Ambassador Arietti noted in his departing message (reftel), Rwanda remains a deeply divided society, and average Rwandans still identify closely with their ethnic origins. Some Hutus argue that the massive gacaca program, now completing the judgment of over one million (Hutu) genocide cases, like the nationwide campaign against "genocide ideology," which by definition only Hutus could manifest, particularly now that the 1994 genocide has been renamed "the Tutsi genocide," are secondarily intended to keep Hutus off balance, unwilling to serve in high places (for fear of being brought low) and generally out of office. For example, new Minister of State for Education Theoneste Mutsindashyaka recently addressed 750 secondary school headmasters, and, according to the pro-government New Times, angrily told them that 80 percent of them were "masterminds of genocide ideology."Assuming that headmasters match the general ethnic breakdown in society, the Minister essentially accused every Hutu in the room being a genocide ideologist.
In Rwanda's case there is almost no genetic difference at play to account for Tutsi success vs Hutu failure, it is largely an antisocial dynamic
Vietnam:
Occupied/colonized Vietnam was kleptocratic hell hole rife with decadence and "me love you long time" prostitution
This oppressive state was maintained by coalitions of various minority identities, who were recruited and radicalized against the ethnic-religious core of the state (Buddhist religion, Kinh ethnicity)
The CIA went out of their way to minimize public awareness of these ethnic dynamics
Ethnic groups co-opted include the Hmong people
In the early 1960s, partially as a result of the North Vietnamese invasion of Laos the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Special Activities Division began to recruit, train and lead the indigenous Hmong people in Laos to fight against North Vietnamese Army divisions invading Laos during the Vietnam War. This "Secret Army" was organized into various mobile regiments and divisions, including various Special Guerrilla Units, all of whom were led by General Vang Pao. An estimated sixty-percent (60%) of Hmong men in Laos joined up.
... Though their role was generally kept secret in the early stages of the conflict...
...Small groups of Hmong people, many of the second or third generation descendants of former CIA soldiers, remain internally displaced in remote parts of Laos, in fear of government reprisals. Faced with continuing military operations against them by the government and a scarcity of food, some groups have begun coming out of hiding, while others have sought asylum in Thailand and other countries.[85] Hmongs in Laos, in particularly, develop a stronger and deeper anti-Vietnamese sentiment than its Vietnamese Hmong cousins, due to historic persecution caused by the Vietnamese on them.
And of course, non-Buddhists were pushed to take leadership positions so that they would rule over Buddhists in a hostile oppressive manner, like Christian Diem as he made the Buddhists an "unprotected class".
Contemporary context outside of Western states:
Kurdish minorities are usually incited to suppress Arab Nationalism, and various Asian minorities like Uighurs are being incited against Chinese Nationalism today.