Today's Stories

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

May 7, 2008

Winslow T. Wheeler
Drowning in Dollars

Joanne Mariner
Torture After Dark

Col. Dan Smith
It's Lying and It's Murder: How KBR Electrocuted US Troops

Brian M. Downing
Reports From Foreign Provinces

Andy Worthington
Who are the Prisoners Released with Sami al-Haj?

John Stauber
Pentagon Propaganda Documents Go Online, But Will the Media Ever Report on Them?

Christopher Brauchli
Outsourcing Tax Collection

Nelson P. Valdés
Cinco de Mayo and Cinco de Agosto: Mexican History and Manufactured Identities

Rep. Keith Ellison
High Court Deals Blow to Voting Rights

Dan Bacher
Undam the Klamath, Mr. Buffett!

Website of the Day
Green Porno

May 6, 2008

Pam Martens
The Obama Bubble Agenda

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. is Promoting Secession in Bolivia

Marjorie Cohn
Under U.S. Law Torture is Always Illegal

Ralph Nader
America's Pay-or-Die Health Care System

Yigal Bronner
Archaeologists for Hire

Brian Cloughley
No Laws for Bush America

Jacob Hornberger
Killing Enemies Without Trial

Walter Brasch
People Who Don't Need People

Paul Krassner
An Open Letter to Michael Moore

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Running Mates from the Imaginary Plane

Website of the Day
Some People

May 5, 2008

Pam Martens
Obama's Money Cartel

Conn Hallinan
The Syrian Affair

Corey D. B. Walker
The End of Politics

Uri Avnery
Crusader Anxiety: Israel at 60

Dave Zirin
Refocusing Olympic Protest

Corporate Crime Reporter
Wiist's Crusade Against Corporations

Robert Jensen
The Selling and Shaping of Our Souls

Daniel White
What People Want to Hear About in Austin, Texas

Benjamin Dangl
May Day Raid on General Dynamics

Website of the Day
McCain's Pastor of Hate: "Starve. I Don't Care. Starve."

May 3 / 4, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Has Rev. Wright Cost Obama the Presidency?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Shameful Failure of the Black Congressional Caucus

Diane Farsetta
What the Pentagon Pundits Were Selling on the Side

Tariq Ali
New Labour is Dead

Harry Browne
The USA's Other Island: Irish Leaders and the War on Terror

Wajahat Ali
Pakistan's New Daughter of Destiny? An Exclusive Interview with Fatima Bhutto

David Yearsley
A Challenge to Jeffrey Eugenides

Greg Moses
Salamat, Riad Hamad

William Blum
Rev. Wright, the CIA and the AIDS Thing

Robert Fantina
The Rhetoric of John McCain

Fred Gardner
The Greatest Story Never Told

Dave Lindorff
Blame It On Paraguay: The Bush Family's Bad Real Estate Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Standardizing Learning

Binoy Kampmark
Brown, Boris and the British Council Elections

Howard Lisnoff
The Lost First Amendment

Daniel Cassidy
Slanguage: Paddy Works on the Erie

Bill Moyers
Shrink-Wrapping the Theology of Rev. Wright

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
John Holt / Akbar Khan

Website of the Weekend
Ed Abbey, Patron Saint of the Walker's Rights Movement

May 2, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
Secret Bush "Finding" Widens Covert War on Iran

David Isenberg
The Return of Limited Nuclear War?

Vijay Prashad
Driven to Terror: the Case of the Lackawana Six

William Blum
Spies Without Borders

David Macaray
Shutting Down the West Coast Ports: the ILWU's May Day Strike

Rannie Amiri
Is Sadr City Becoming the Next Gaza?

William James Martin
The Carter Coup

Stephanie Westbrook
As Italy Lurches Rightward, a Ray of Hope from Vicenza

Linn Washington, Jr.
A Battle Over Murals in Parisian Ghettos

Anthony Papa
How the Byrne Fund Corrupts Cops and Destroys Lives

Website of the Day
The Serota Petition

May 1, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Fed Sinks the Dollar

Behzad Yaghmaian
Blaming the Yuan for the Deficit with China

Wajahat Ali
The Dark Knight: the Real Rise of Obama

Dedrick Muhammad
Senator Obama, Please Come to Your Senses

Cynthia McKinney
Police in America Can Kill Some People With Impunity

Corporate Crime Reporter
Farm Broadcaster Fired After Ripping Monsanto's Goon Squads

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Speech That Might Have Been

Reza Fiyouzat
Stop Obliterating Yourself!

Leigh Saavedra
Suspending the Federal Gas Tax

Tom Semioli
Hollywood Hypocrite: an Open Letter to Michael Moore

Website of the Day
Why Won't McCain Release His Medical Records?

Subscribe Online

Race and the American Working Class

Poverty Wages

By KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR

For Marxists , antiracism is central to any political project aimed at transforming U.S. society. This perspective is premised on three things. The first is that racism is morally repugnant and destroys and devastates those who are victimized by it. Second, if socialists do not take seriously the fight against racism, they cannot possibly convince Black workers that they should be socialists. Finally, socialist revolution is only possible through the efforts of a multiracial working class whose unity is based on white workers being convinced that they must become the best fighters against racism.

For many progressives, this last sentence—on the possibility of white workers fighting racism—is utopian. It is widely accepted today by radicals, liberals, and left-wing academics that not only do white workers materially benefit from racism, but all whites are united in defense of "whiteness."

For the second time since its initial publication in 1991, historian David Roediger has published a new edition of The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. This newest edition includes both a new preface by the author and an introduction by former Black Panther and current Yale law professor, Kathleen Cleaver. While the political concept of "white skin privilege" is not Roediger's, his book was instrumental in its attempt to establish a theoretical foundation for what has now morphed into "whiteness studies."

For Roediger, and for a veritable cottage industry of "whiteness" theoreticians and academics, "whiteness" consists of the sum total of perks, privileges, and advantages that come with white skin in a racist society. Moreover, whiteness, and its requisite benefits, are the foundational basis of white identity and white unity against nonwhites. The Wages of Whiteness thus posits itself as a revisionist history. Roediger views his history as a revision to a "crude" Marxism that he says has historically "privileged class over race" by describing racism as a means by which the ruling class divides the working class. Roediger, who credits Marxism as furnishing his "intellectual tools," writes,

The main body of writing by white Marxists in the United States has both "naturalized" whiteness and oversimplified race.… The point that race is created wholly ideologically and historically, while class is not wholly so created, has often been boiled down to the notion that class (or "the economic") is more real, more fundamental, more basic or more important than race.… [The] rosy view of a literal correspondence between racism and "social necessity" and of the possibility of an unambiguous revolutionary solution to racism is largely gone. But the idea that class should be politically privileged has not, as witnessed by the outpouring by recent left and left-liberal arguments that the Black freedom movement must now couch its appeals in terms of class rather than race. There are three central problems with Roediger's analysis, the first being his specious historical recollections. Roediger's analysis begins in colonial America, but he cherry-picks his way through the history in order to substantiate his thesis that white workers were complicit in the construction of white supremacy. For example, there is no explanation of watershed events like Bacon's Rebellion, where Black and white freedmen burned down the capitol of Virginia and threatened the stability of the entire colonial regime. Bacon's Rebellion is generally cited as a turning point in the social construction of race in America.

Moreover, Roediger ignores the unique composition of the American working class and its consequent impact on the development of class consciousness and solidarity. The American working class developed from waves of millions of immigrants from all over the world who sometimes came with nationalist hostilities against other workers with whom their native rulers may have been in rivalry. Where that hostility was not present, new hostilities were provoked by employers who stood to gain by having a fractured, racially and ethnically tense workplace.

The second issue with the The Wages of Whiteness is its insistence on disconnecting material causality from racism. In an attempt to distance his own analysis from the Marxist method of historical materialism, Roediger relocates the roots of racism in the psychology of white workers. White workers create a Black "other" to blame for all their fears and insecurities that stem from their exploitation under capitalism. Wages rigorously downplays job competition between freed Blacks and whites as a contributing factor for racial animus between the two groups. Moreover, he denies or downplays any influence the ruling class and its media had in shaping the views of white workers––again discounting a central idea of Marxism—that the ruling ideas of a society reflect the ideology of its ruling class.

Roediger says Black sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois' seminal Black Reconstruction was his inspiration for Wages. The title of Roediger's book is in fact a play on Du Bois' reference to the "psychological wage" of racism. I have written elsewhere in this magazine about Roediger and Black Reconstruction (issue 57, January–February 2008). But it is worth mentioning here that while Du Bois places Black slaves, and then Black freedmen, at the center of capitalist production in the United States and the world—and thereby makes them central figures in their own liberation and the liberation of humanity—Blacks are absent from Roediger's work except as props and recipients of white racism. Moreover, by focusing on the period before the Civil War as opposed to the period Du Bois examined—both the Civil War and its aftermath—Roediger misses the complicated ways in which poor whites and Blacks attempted to construct a new society based on their common needs and aspirations.

These efforts failed more than they succeeded, but that alone is not particularly revelatory. It is not quite a "stop the presses" moment to discover that white workers were racist in a country with Black slavery, where slavery was rationalized by white political leaders as necessary and reasonable given the "savagery" of the Africans who were enslaved. The significance of the Civil War and the end of slavery is that it created the possibility for a united, multiracial working class where that possibility did not exist before. Whether or not that possibility was acted upon has always been a political question that depended on the size and strength of the Left and the existence of labor militants and other radicals who could politically argue for interracial unity and who could build political organizations that put that principle into practice. No socialist with common sense has ever argued that unity was automatic simply because Blacks were no longer slaves. Unity, then as today, must always be fought for, argued for, and organized.

This possibility revealed itself almost immediately after Reconstruction, when Black and white workers collaborated on waterfronts, in lumber mills, and in coal mines across the South in ways that were unfathomable before the war. The Populist movement in the 1890s also highlighted the possibility of a united struggle, but also highlighted the weakness of political movements that did not fully grasp the need to combat racism.

If one reduces these and other examples of attemps at interracial unity as parenthetical to the more prevalent history of white terrorism and racism directed at Black workers, then it is impossible to understand why the Southern ruling class invoked Jim Crow across the South nearly thirty years after the Civil War—as it embarked on a campaign to disenfranchise not only Blacks but poor whites as well.

For those who are interested in learning more about the history and formation of the working class—including both Black and white workers—a better read is the recently re-released Labor, Free and Slave by Bernard Mandel.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes for the International Socialist Review. She can be reached at: keeangataylor2008@u.northwestern.edu

 

 

 

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