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The Sinking Middle Class challenges the "save the middle class"
rhetoric that dominates our political imagination. The slogan
misleads us regarding class, nation, and race. Talk of middle class
salvation reinforces myths holding that the US is a providentially
middle class nation. Implicitly white, the middle class becomes
viewed as unheard amidst supposed concerns for racial justice and
for the poor. Roediger shows how little the US has been a middle
class nation. The term seldom appeared in US writing before 1900.
Many white Americans were self-employed, but this social experience
separated them from the contemporary middle class of today,
overwhelmingly employed and surveilled. Today's highly unequal US
hardly qualifies as sustaining the middle class. The idea of the US
as a middle class place required nurturing. Those doing that
ideological work-from the business press, to pollsters, to
intellectuals celebrating the results of free enterprise-gained
little traction until the Depression and Cold War expanded the
middle class brand. Much later, the book's sections on liberal
strategist Stanley Greenberg detail, "saving the middle class"
entered presidential politics. Both parties soon defined the middle
class to include over 90% of the population, precluding intelligent
attention to the poor and the very rich. Resurrecting radical
historical critiques of the middle class, Roediger argues that
middle class identities have so long been shaped by debt, anxiety
about falling, and having to sell one's personality at work that
misery defines a middle class existence as much as fulfillment.
The Sinking Middle Class challenges the “save the middle
class” rhetoric that dominates our political imagination. The
slogan misleads us regarding class, nation, and race. Talk of
middle class salvation reinforces myths holding that the US is a
providentially middle class nation. Implicitly white, the middle
class becomes viewed as unheard amidst supposed concerns for racial
justice and for the poor. Roediger shows how little the US has been
a middle class nation. The term seldom appeared in US writing
before 1900. Many white Americans were self-employed, but this
social experience separated them from the contemporary middle class
of today, overwhelmingly employed and surveilled. Today’s highly
unequal US hardly qualifies as sustaining the middle class. The
idea of the US as a middle class place required nurturing. Those
doing that ideological work—from the business press, to
pollsters, to intellectuals celebrating the results of free
enterprise—gained little traction until the Depression and Cold
War expanded the middle class brand. Much later, the book’s
sections on liberal strategist Stanley Greenberg detail, “saving
the middle class” entered presidential politics. Both parties
soon defined the middle class to include over 90% of the
population, precluding intelligent attention to the poor and the
very rich. Resurrecting radical historical critiques of the middle
class, Roediger argues that middle class identities have so long
been shaped by debt, anxiety about falling, and having to sell
one’s personality at work that misery defines a middle class
existence as much as fulfillment.
This third annual volume from the Organization of American
Historians, containing the best American history articles published
between the summers of 2006 and 2007, provides a quick and
comprehensive overview of the top work and the current intellectual
trends in the field of American history. With contributions from a
diverse group of historians, this collection appeals both to
scholars and to lovers of history alike.
David R. Roediger has been in the vanguard of the study of race and
labor in American history for decades. He first came to prominence
as the author of The Wages of Whiteness, a classic study of racism
in the development of a white working class in nineteenth-century
America. In Working Toward Whiteness, Roediger continues that
history into the twentieth century. He recounts how ethnic groups
considered white today-including Jewish-, Italian-, and
Polish-Americans-were once viewed as undesirables by the WASP
establishment in the United States. They eventually became part of
white America, through the nascent labor movement, New Deal
reforms, and a rise in home-buying. Once assimilated as fully
white, many of them adopted the racism of those whites who formerly
looked down on them as inferior. From ethnic slurs to racially
restrictive covenants-the real estate agreements that ensured
all-white neighborhoods-Roediger explores the mechanisms by which
immigrants came to enjoy the privileges of being white in America.
A disturbing, necessary, masterful history, Working Toward
Whiteness uses the past to illuminate the present. In an
Introduction to the 2018 edition, Roediger considers the resonance
of the book in the age of Trump, showing how Working Toward
Whiteness remains as relevant as ever even though most migrants
today are not from Europe.
Archie Green: The Making of a Working-Class Hero celebrates one of
the most revered folklorists and labor historians of the twentieth
century. Devoted to understanding the diverse cultural customs of
working people, Archie Green (1917-2009) tirelessly documented
these traditions and educated the public about the place of
workers' culture and music in American life. Doggedly lobbying
Congress for support of the American Folklife Preservation Act of
1976, Green helped establish the American Folklife Center at the
Library of Congress, a significant collection of images,
recordings, and written accounts that preserve the myriad cultural
productions of Americans. Capturing the many dimensions of Green's
remarkably influential life and work, Sean Burns draws on extensive
interviews with Green and his many collaborators to examine the
intersections of radicalism, folklore, labor history, and worker
culture with Green's work. Burns closely analyzes Green's political
genealogy and activist trajectory while illustrating how he worked
to open up an independent political space on the American Left that
was defined by an unwavering commitment to cultural pluralism.
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Race Struggles (Paperback)
Theodore Koditschek, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, Helen A Neville; Contributions by Pedro Caban, David Crockett, …
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R806
Discovery Miles 8 060
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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This collection is a contribution to the ongoing examination of
race and its relation to class and gender. The essays in the volume
start with the premise that although race, like class and gender,
is socially constructed, all three categories have been shaped
profoundly by their context in a capitalist society. Race, in other
words, is a historical category that develops not only in
dialectical relation to class and gender but also in relation to
the material conditions in which all three are forged. These
assumptions underlie the organization of the volume, which is
divided into three parts: "Racial Structures," which explores the
problem of how race has historically been structured in modern
capitalist societies; "Racial Ideology and Identity," which tackles
diverse but interrelated questions regarding the representation of
race and racism in dominant ideologies and discourses; and
"Struggle," which builds on the insight that resistance to
structures and ideologies of racial oppression is always situated
in a particular time and place. In addition to discussing and
analyzing various dimensions of the African American experience,
contributors also consider the ways in which race plays itself out
in the experience of Asian Americans and in the very different
geopolitical environments of the British Empire and postcolonial
Africa. Contributors are Pedro Cabán, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua,
David Crockett, Theodore Koditschek, Scott Kurashige, Clarence
Lang, Minkah Makalani, Helen A. Neville, Tola Olu Pearce, David
Roediger, Monica M. White, and Jeffrey Williams.
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