The Color of Politics: Race and the Mainsprings of American Politics [Paperback]

Michael Goldfield (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1565843258 | ISBN-13: 978-1565843257 | Publication Date: September 1, 1997

How has race determined the course of American history? From the Revolution to the New Deal, from the Civil War to the Second World War, race has been at the center of virtually every national turning point. In a brilliant book, Michael Goldfield doggedly documents the persistence of racism in the American nation through a penetrating assessment of racism in the labor movement.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Goldfield (labor studies, Wayne State Univ.) has written a radical analysis of American political development emphasizing the relationship between race and class. He gives particular attention to five historic "critical periods or turning points": the Colonial era, the Revolutionary War and the development of the Constitution, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Populist movement, and the Depression and New Deal era. These relatively brief periods are said to have had a major impact on the shape of politics during the longer periods in between them. Goldfield's discussion of the failure of organized labor to unionize Southern workers successfully during the last of these critical periods and the continuing political consequences of that failure are among the more interesting parts of the book. Unfortunately, the author's undue reliance on secondary sources will reduce the book's appeal to academics, and the number of factual errors (usually minor) limits its value to all readers. An optional purchase for large academic libraries.?Thomas H. Ferrell, Univ. of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

"The interplay between class and race," Goldfield, a labor studies professor at Wayne State University, urges, is "the key to understanding the peculiarities of American politics and the political weakness of its working class." Goldfield examines critical points in U.S. history (colonial southern planters' choice of slavery over indentured labor; the Revolutionary War/Constitution era; the Civil War/Reconstruction period; the populist years and their "System of 1896"; and the Depression and New Deal), when powerful issues of governance and social relations (centrally including class and race) were raised, and their resolution "led to altered social and political relations in general, new arrangements of social control, and a reorganized system of racial domination and subordination." In addition to analyzing successes and failures of U.S. working-class movements in bridging racial divides by recognizing racial supremacy as an obstacle to all, Goldfield extends his study to include the civil rights movement and the past 30 years' "building of the white racist coalition," still scapegoating blacks to distract white workers from the true roots of their economic troubles. Timely and controversial. Mary Carroll

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 404 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The (September 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565843258
• ISBN-13: 978-1565843257
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #425,232 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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