A well-researched but unbalanced study of the interelation of race
and labor in American history. Bancroft Prize - winning historian
Jones (Brandeis Univ.; The Dispossesed, 1992; Labor of Love, Labor
of Sorrow, 1985) sets out to explore how and why black and white
workers have been treated differently throughout American history,
both before and after emancipation. Her study begins with a look at
the failed policy of enslaving Indians and the subsequent practice
of importing African slaves. Some black slaves in the South won or
bought their freedom, but most free blacks found themselves either
with few prospects as far as skilled labor was concerned or
compelled to work for the same people to whom they had been
enslaved. Meanwhile, in the mostly "free" North, job competition
between free blacks and whites often exploded in violence;
immigrants from Ireland and elsewhere would destroy black property
and assault African-Americans who they felt were vying for their
jobs. This is one of the primary paradoxes that Jones addresses:
White Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries could simultaneously
view blacks as intellectually and functionally inferior and yet
fear that these perceived inferiors could take their jobs. The
truth, of course, is that prejudicial hiring practices kept this
from happening, even after the passing of civil rights legislation
in the 20th century. Unions, while giving lip service to
brotherhood and equality, were likewise discriminatory toward
racial minorities. Disappointingly, Jones devotes much of the book
to the period from early settlements up to the Civil War. The
discussion of work-related discrimination in the 20th century, by
contrast, seems too terse and insufficiently detailed. For
instance, the fate of the laws meant to enforce equal opportunity
and affirmative action doesn't get the close attention that it
requires. In the end, the subject is probably too large for one
volume. Nonetheless, this is a useful and sobering work. (Kirkus
Reviews)
"A brilliant indictment. . . . As history that informs the present, this book carries great moral force."—William S. McFeely, author of Frederick Douglass
This is history at its best — the epic, often tragic story of success and failure on the uneven playing fields of American labor, rooted in painstaking research and passionately alive to its present-day implications for a just society. Jacqueline Jones shows unmistakably how nearly every significant social transformation in American history (from bound to free labor, from farm work to factory work, from a blue-collar to a white-collar economy) rolled back the hard-won advances of those African Americans who had managed to gain footholds in various jobs and industries. This is a story not of simple ideological "racism" but of politics and economics interacting to determine what kind of work was "suitable" for which groups.
Here is a "useful and sobering" (Kirkus Reviews) account of why the connection between success and the work ethic was severed long ago for a substantial number of Americans. American Work goes far beyond the easy sloganeering of the current debates on affirmative action and welfare versus workfare to inform those debates with rich historical context and compelling insight.
"American Work performs the inestimable service that all history should: It allows us to imaginatively reconstruct the vanished worlds that have conspired in the creation of our own."-Chris Lehmann, Newsday
"Readers of this well-written book will appreciate the way Jones is able to integrate race-based matters with broader issues of social inequality, state public policies, and national political economy."—William Julius Wilson, author of When Work Disappears
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