Divided We Stand [Hardcover]

Bruce Nelson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0691017328 | ISBN-13: 978-0691017327 | Publication Date: January 15, 2001

Divided We Stand is a study of how class and race have intersected in American society - above all, in the "making" and remaking of the American working class in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It includes vivid examples of white working-class "agency" in the construction of racially discriminatory employment structures. But Bruce Nelson is less concerned with racism as such than with the concrete historical circumstances in which racialized class identities emerged and developed. This leads him to a detailed and often fascinating consideration of white working-class ethnicity but also to a careful analysis of black workers - their conditions of work, their aspirations and identities, their struggles for equality. Making its case with passion and clarity, Divided We Stand is a compelling and controversial book.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The battle for worker's rights in the U.S. has always coexisted with the battle for racial equality, yet these two constituencies have often been on opposing sides. The tortuous process by which predominantly white unionized labor groups gradually came to grips with their history of racial exclusion forms the background of this superbly written, intellectually exciting and pioneering book. A history professor at Dartmouth College, Nelson weds detailed research with in-depth interviews, oral histories and his own first-hand experience (he worked union shop jobs before attending graduate school), producing a study of labor's struggle with race and a critique of the tendency of "new labor history" to ignore blacks and excuse white racism. With grace and acuity, Nelson unites his far-ranging concerns, from the overt racism of many 19th-century Roman Catholic clergy who helped white immigrants organize and the history of companies using blacks who had been excluded from unions as strikebreakers to the deep-seated conflicts between the AFL and CIO over race policies and the use of red-baiting to attack those who attempted to fully integrate unions. In assembling this history, Nelson successfully argues that race and ethnicity have long been central issues in the labor movement. (Jan. 12) Forecast: Like Noel Ignatiev's influential How the Irish Became White and David Roediger's classic The Wages of Whiteness, this book has the potential to profoundly change how we read and think about American history. If it garners the review attention it deserves, it could find a solid audience among readers who enjoyed those books.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

A landmark study of race and trade unionism in longshoring and steel from the rise of heavy industry in the late 1800s to its decline in the 1980s. . . . Nelson digs deeply into archival sources and oral interviews to describe real workers and their shop-floor experience in compelling detail. -- Review

A powerful and disturbing book about the nature of race relations in working-class America. -- Bruce Nelson, History: Reviews of New Books

A valuable contribution to the . . . [study] of white racial identity in American labor history. -- Steven Reich, Journal of Southern History

This is an important piece of scholarship that deserves wide attention and debate. -- Choice

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 424 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (January 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691017328
• ISBN-13: 978-0691017327
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,825,825 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An important story, well told., August 3, 2008

By 

Roderick O. Mulllett (Durango, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Divided We Stand: American Workers and the Struggle for Black Equality (Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America) (Paperback)

Bruce Nelson, a Dartmouth history professor has the seanachi (Irish story teller) gene. The story is of the role played by racial/ethnic identity in the working class. It comences in the nonunion era and comes up to almost the present time. It is told in significant detail, looking at many unions and zeroing in on the longshore unions and Steelworkers. It demonstrates the fludity and yet persistent influence of racial/ethnic identities, Irish identity having been most transformed and the "white" perception of African Americans being the most unchanged. Nelson laments the failure of working class identity to have trumped racial/ethnic identity. He does not address the rightness/wrongness of Affirmative Action today, but his story schould give substantial pause to any belief that ethnocentrism has suddenly ceased to exist.