Customer Reviews

The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (Haymarket Series)

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David Roediger examines the growth and social construction of racism as it was related to the working classes of the ninteenth century. His scholarship earned him the Organization of American Historians Merle Curti Prize for US Social History in 1991. This work is brief, but dense in analysis, argument and scholarly interpretations.

The book basically explores how white workers (with an emphasis on Irish Americans) sought after a "wage" for their color, by placing on Black Americans the mantle of "other", objectifying and stratifying blacks into an object of prejudice and discrimination.

After a lengthy discussion of the historiography of labor and race issues, Roediger writes eloquently of the cultural formation of words such as slave, servant, hired hand, freeman, white slave, master and boss. All of which, he argues, were used to diferentiate between blacks and white laborers. He is careful to point out that it was the workers themselves who created the terms as a means to divide the races and elevate whites on the hierarchy of social status. It is a convincing arguement. The text concludes with an enlightening discussion of "black face" and the social struggles of the Irish, whom many felt in the majority viewed as "white negroes."

This book is scholarly and a read that demands one's attention.

This book tackles the difficult subject of race relations among the working class of America. The time frame for this book is generally fom 1800 through the Civil war, as America was turning from an agricultural society to an industrial society. Slavery was drawing to a close, immigration had increased, and the urban populations of American cities were growing. All of these elements combined to create an urban working class complete with racial tension. Within this context, David R. Roediger defines the attitudes of race and race relation in a manner that is unique to most histories of urban studies. He not only records the developments of a racial identity, but he also examines the reasons why the white community defined itself as well as how the white community defined other groups. This book will probably stir a lot of controversy, but it will also answer many questions. Any historian or urban studies major can benefit form this book, but beyond college level readers, anyone interested in racial identities and racial differences can also appriciate this book.

Let it be said from the outset that Roediger is an American Labor Historian, and although this is a book about race, it is also a book about the way class and race are so intertwined. I think it is somewhat amusing that so many people find Roediger racist against whites, I don't think he is: he is more interested in the way race and class became nearly unified concepts in the formation of the American Working Class during the nineteenth century. As Roediger points out, Working class became in many ways, white working class: which is no suprise considering that most works of labor history before the 1960s (and even most afterwards) concerned themselves only with white men. This of course leads to a minor fault in his work: gender is not fully considered (but at 180 pages, this is understandable). Dana Frank's "Purchasing Power" would be a good work to get a small glimpse of that peice of the puzzle.

Overall, a great work of historical scholarship that should be read by every serious historian.

Roediger knows which side his bread is buttered on. The so called social sciences are nothing more than pseudo scientific leftist grandstanding. Full of rhetoric, but short on analysis. Im sure at some point in his career, professor roediger knew that as a white sociology professor, his days would be numbered unless he began bashing himself, white gentiles, american history, and white males.

Im sure after he began the white hating, he got tenure, again hes no dope. However hes highly unethical.

Two important points about his book, and racial marxist ideology.....

If white males were so all powerful and so oppressive, how is it that a white male hating professor like roediger still has a job in an american university? You would think if white males were all powerful, they would make sure those that hate them wouldnt teach naive young kids. If a professor in americar ridiculed condemned, and vilified blacks, hispanics or asians the way roediger does to whites, he would lose his job.

Two, why is it labelled racism when white gentile workers do whats in their best interests as a group? Mexicans do this, blacks do this, and competing ethnic and tribal groups do the same the world over. The truth is, its not racism, racism is a liberal construction. Tribalism? Sure, but everyone does the same thing. Roediger and his book are both ridiciulous and pathetic.

This book challenges white male racism, proving once again that white males are racist not only when they are affluent, but when they are "working class", a term that bears some scrutiny, because even if a Black person recieves the same wages, they are of course subject to the horrors of racism. When *will* white males ever figure this out???

A small but very significant difference in terminology prevented me from getting far with this book. Roediger refers to black persons as "Black" (capitalized) and to white persons as "white" (lowercase) throughout his entire book. This rather meaningful difference in terms is utilized in every single instance that a cursory glance through the text revealed these words appearing either as nouns or adjectives. Thus the white person is consistently devalued in contrast to the black individual, solely by the word used to designate him or her. Since this racial devaluation of the white indiviudal is the premise upon all of what follows is based, why bother to read further? Almost before the introductory sentence, we already have a good sense of the bias inherent in the whole book, a bias which puts the author's fair reporting of facts or interpretation thereof into serious question. Is it just a stupid joke, or an example of white self-hatred, or both, that Roedinger would write nearly 200 pages making a case about how whites advanced themselves in the workplace by collectively devaluing blacks, while himself using language which consistently devalues whites?

This book is yet another attempt at degrading the white race. There is nothing wrong with being white, just like there is nothing wrong with being black. If you want to hear someones idea on whats wrong with being white instead of looking at the facts then you should read this book.