I mean there's minoritiles in scandinavia and they are still likely to end up in prison. They are just treated better.

The US was founded by the english who used prisoners as soldiers and ran a giant slave trade. Its less about homogeny and more about english colonial culture which is where the tiered society in the US originates:

• at the top you have the rich dandy fuckwits who are both dumb and violent
• below that you have the merchants and traders who are explicitly extractive
• below that you have prisoners who are pointing a gun at the natives and kidnapped workers
• the natives and and kidnapped workers at the bottom

The US added a level of racism that even upset the brits I should add but in 250 years it seems we still essentially have the british colonial system.

We've replaced the prisoner military with a form of wage serfdom and replaced kidnapped workers with prison workers.