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.
