Using ethnography from a 1995 ‘race’ crisis at Rutgers University, I show the applicability of George Bond’s writings on inequality. Bond’s ideas about social constructions of the past, organic ideologies, and people’s acceptance of structures that subjugate them, are discussed to demonstrate the use of ‘hoaxes’ and clientage in the Rutgers episode. The discussion occurs in the broader context of theory about social inequality and social dominance.