David R. Roediger’s book The Wages of Whiteness deals with the formation of the working class in 19th century America. Roediger attempts to dispel recent labor history’s treatment of class and race during this period. He notes that Marxist writers have marginalized race and have presented the view that class is “more real, more fundamental, more basic or more important than race.”[1] Roediger argues that this attitude mischaracterizes race and class relations and in fact the two cannot be cleaved and handled separately. In his own words, his central argument is “whiteness was a way in which white workers responded to a fear of dependency on wage labor and to the necessities of capitalist work discipline,”[2] and that therefore to understand “class” in America is to understand how workers viewed themselves in regards to race.
Roediger begins his examination with an overview of the “prehistory”[3] of the “white worker.” He notes that the designation “white” was used to distinguish Europeans from Native Americans and that it had a “strong connection to work and to discipline.”[4] Whites were seen as hardworking and industrious while the Native Americans were seen as “others” – that is, not hardworking or industrious, and thus, not white. However, nearing the time of the American Revolution, this comparison did not prove to be especially useful in the long-term, not only because Native Americans were disappearing rapidly, but also because in time the Native American was seen as independent, a man without a master. Whites fully enamored with the idea of being “free” – both economically and politically, could not use the American Indian as a basis for comparison. There was, however, another race that would prove to be a much more useful yardstick in determining whiteness: the African. The African American’s life was characterized by servitude, by his master. Where there might be a problem with a white justifying the indentured servitude and apprenticeship of other whites (and thus, Freemen), they could at least say that the indentured whites were freer than Black slaves. Roediger notes that “[Black slaves] could be stigmatized as the antithesis of republican citizens. In the changed circumstance of the nineteenth century, they would further be seen as the opposites of ‘free white labor’.”[5]
The distinction between “white” and “not white” increasingly became a matter of “having a master” and “being independent.” Roediger shows that the language in which whites described their work reflected this. The word “master” was completely taken out of white worker vocabulary, replaced by a Dutch word that had the same exact meaning: “boss”.[6] “Servant,” too, was erased, replaced with “hired help.”[7] Only black slaves were “servants” and had “masters;” a free white therefore could not be a “servant” and most certainly not have a “master.” For evidence, Roediger notes that labor movements in antebellum America often used rhetoric such as “wages slave,” and “white slavery” to describe working conditions and the work done by free Northern whites.[8] This language, however, fell apart when put into republican terms: the white has the opportunity to voice his grievances at the ballot box, while the black slave does not. Roediger believes that this shift in thinking lead to the term “white slavery” being popularly seen as a call to question the white laborer’s citizenship in the republic.[9] This leads Roediger to quote W.E.B. Du Bois, who said being white held “public and psychological wages.”[10]
Roediger goes on to examine the phenomenon of blackface in context of class formation. He notes that the word “coon,” seen today as a slur against Blacks, referred to a white country person before 1848. Originally, the term described a particular kind of white person, one “who had not internalized capitalist work discipline.”[11] By 1848, through blackface minstrel entertainment, the term began to be applied exclusively to Blacks.[12] Roediger states that whites saw Blacks as naturally gifted entertainers, and celebrations in early 19the century often included African American song and dance. When these celebrations barred blacks, whites with their faces painted black began to replace them and act black. Not only that, but when whites rioted or demonstrated against political authority, they often did it in blackface or dressed as an American Indian.[13] The redefining of the word “coon,” the replacement of black entertainers with blackface, and general behavior described as whites as “uncivilized” being carried out in blackface leads Roediger to conclude that Blacks, for the white laborer, represented a preindustrial society and its values for which they secretly longed. He writes, “Blackface served not only to identify the white crowd with…Black popular culture, but also to connect its wearers with the preindustrial permissiveness imputed to African-Americans.”[14] Furthermore, Roediger writes, “Blackface whiteness meant respectable rowdiness and safe rebellion.”[15]
The last issue that Roediger addresses is Irish immigration during the antebellum. He states that Irish Americans often had to take up jobs that were seen as labor fit only for Blacks.[16] To many natural born whites, this equated them with Blacks and thus not full citizens of the Republic. Rather than take up cause with Blacks, the Irish allied themselves with the Democratic Party, guaranteeing them the status of “white” and the advantages it brings.[17] And, as attempting to define themselves as whites, they too saw class and citizenship in racial terms. The most common reason historians give for anti-Black sentiment in the immigrant Irish is job competition. However, Roediger believes that this is not a sufficient reason. After all, he says, it was other whites that were the biggest competitors to Irish jobs, not blacks.[18] What the Irish wanted to do was “get out from under the burden of doing unskilled work in a society that identified such work (and some craft work) as ‘nigger work.’”[19]
The Wages of Whiteness concludes with an examination of the Civil War and the Reconstruction. What should have been a time for whites and Blacks of the same class to unite instead became a situation rife with racial antagonism. He writes that “decades of white supremacist habits necessarily burdened all efforts to rethink class relations.”[20] Whites could still use race as a useful way to define themselves. He notes that recent immigrant whites had a “Black work ethic”[21]- such as the Irish, that disappeared as the immigrants attempted to become full citizens of the United States.
[1] David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness (New York: Verso, 2007), 7.
[2] 13.
[3] 21.
[4] 21.
[5] 36.
[6] 54.
[7] 47-8.
[8] 65-6.
[9] 83-5.
[10] W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstructionism in America, 1860-1880 (New York, 1935), 700. Quoted in Roediger, Wages of Whiteness, 55.
[11] 100.
[12] 98.
[13] 104.
[14] 107.
[15] 127.
[16] 144-6.
[17] 140.
[18] 147-8.
[19] 150.
[20] 175.
[21] Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974), 285-324. Quoted in Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness, 180.
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Saturday, February 23, 2008
