Theories of race and class:



Today, we’ll be discussing two authors who investigate the formation of a working class in the U.S. and the place of race in its development. Both Lee and Roediger point out how racial formation and class formation were historically interlinked in the U.S.

The connection between racial inequality and class inequality is so strong that some scholars have argued that it is not useful to think about race and class in the U.S. as separate dimensions of hierarchy or social stratification.

Some scholars have argued that racial problems are related to the more general problem of economic class conflict. Some have argued that racial conflict is merely a special manifestation of class conflict. According to this view, ideologies of racism, racial prejudices, institutionalized discrimination, segregation and other factors that reinforce racial stratification are simply part of a superstructure determined by the class structure. “If the facts of class are based on tangible, quantifiable facts, as Marx argues, our notions of race are born of ideology. [a form of economic reductionism, or economic determinism].

Today, I am going to talk about two contrasting theories of how class conflict shapes race relations: the first is the more orthodox Marxist theory of capitalist exploitation, and the second is the split labor market theory of working class antagonisms put forward by Bonacich.

We talk about the emergence of the white working class, we will discuss how whiteness and class are interlinked categories, and how whiteness is produced as a category vis-à-vis its others, by discussing the writings of both Roediger and Lee.

Orthodox Marxist theory:

1. Essentially 2 classes: The ultimate goal of the capitalist is to maximize profits, the capitalist will act to undercut and weaken the workers’ bargaining power and demand for increased wages by promoting divisions within their ranks.

2. Why does the capitalist class benefit from racism?

3. In the case of the U.S., capitalists act to promote and encourage racial prejudices and racism and to support job, housing, and educational discrimination against blacks and other minorities because this isolates a lower-priced black labor force from the white labor force.

4. Discrimination guarantees that the average wage of the black workers will be paid less than that of the white worker and so diminishes the likelihood of the solidarity of labor against the capitalist class. In other words, the working class cannot unite to overthrow the capitalist class.

5. Capitalist class benefits… because they have created a reserve army of labor that is not united against them; 2. by paying blacks less, they can appropriate a greater surplus from the labor of blacks [and so increase their profits], and 3. because they can keep the wages of white labor down by threatening to replace them with black labor in special situations, such as strikes.

6. The white working class come to think of it as in their best interest to continue racial discrimination to protect their jobs and wages from black labor; but this is because they are duped by the “mask of privilege” that conceals the fact that racism is really in the ruling classes interest: since it enhances their ability to exploit and divide the working class. … So as you read in the German Ideology, the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class.

Trump and his appeal to underemployed white workers--Capitalist class exploits racial hatred to divide working class and to interpret class problems as due to blacks and immigrants and not due to the rising inequality caused by capitalists themselves.

Edna Bonacich:

C. Split Labor-Market Theory

1. According to Bonacich, does the capitalist benefit from racism? Bonacich posits the view that capitalists actually support a liberal or laissez-faire ideology that would permit all workers to compete freely in an open market, because such open competition would displace higher paid labor. In other words, they do not support an attempt to segment the labor force into higher and lower paid workers. They are most interested in getting the cheapest price for labor.

2. According to this theory, racial antagonism develops in a labor market that is split along racial lines.

a. antagonism includes all aspects of intergroup conflict, from beliefs and ideologies (like racism) to overt acts of discrimination (including sabotage and terrorism) as well as institutions such as segregationist laws.

b. So, when does this split labor market occur? … a split labor market occurs when the price of labor for the same work differs for at least two groups, or would differ if they performed the same work.

c. The price of labor refers to labor’s total cost to the employer, including not only wages, but the cost of recruitment, transportation, room and board, education, health care, and the cost of labor unrest.

d. There are three classes in a split labor market (1) business or employers. (2) higher-paid labor; (3) cheaper labor

3. Conflict develops between these classes because of different interests.

a. goal of business is to maintain as cheap a labor force as possible to compete with other business and to maximize profits so employers will import laborers from other areas if local labor costs are too high or if there is a labor shortage.

--because if there is a labor shortage, this puts higher-paid labor in a good bargaining position; by bringing in cheaper labor, employers undercut the bargaining power of higher-paid labor.

c. If the labor market is split along ethnic or racial lines, class antagonisms are transformed into racial antagonisms.

d. Bonacich applies this to immigrants who are drawn into the labor market because they feel they can improve their standard of living and so they need less inducement to enter the labor market… they are willing to be paid less because they may be temporary or are comparing their standard of living with their home countries.

So the goal of higher-paid labor is to maintain its relative privileges as the “aristocracy of labor.” So, if higher-paid labor is strong enough: if it possesses the power to preserve its economic interests, it will prevent being replaced or undercut by cheaper labor. It can do this by most simply, excluding lower paid labor from a given territory.

But if it is not possible to exclude cheaper labor [because it may for example be indigenous to the territory; or may have been imported earlier before higher-paid labor was strong enough to prevent the move, then higher paid workers can:

1. institutionalize a system of ethnic stratification to monopolize skilled positions [thereby ensuring the effectiveness of strike action]

2. work to prevent cheaper labor from developing the skills necessary to compete with higher-paid labor [e.g. by imposing barriers to equal access to education]

3. Deny cheaper labor the political resources that would enable them to undercut higher-paid labor through such things as government regulation, that is, the solution is to weaken cheap labor further so that it is not in business’ interest to use them as a replacement for higher-paid labor

Note: an important difference/contrast with orthodox Marxist theory of race and class: namely the split labor-market theory traces racial inequality directly to the interests of the powerful, higher-paid working class (labor unions and trade guilds) and not to the capitalists.

An interpretation of Trump’s appeal along racial lines would be this: Trump really is no racist, he has nothing to gain from racists, but his rhetoric is intended to appeal to a white working class that uses racism that wants to protect their jobs. They do this because if they can exclude immigrants and paint other minorities as taking away their jobs, they can maintain their position as the aristocracy of labor.

Given the material of Roediger and Lee, how did each case fit with these theories?

--Roediger discusses emergence of Irish working class as white and their racism against blacks prior to the Civil War.

--Lee discusses emergence of Irish working class in relation to the Chinese working class in the decades following Civil War.

David Roediger in his book, The Wages of Whiteness. Roediger’s thesis is that “working class formation and the systematic development of a sense of whiteness went hand in hand for the U.S. white working class” (8). The conjuncture of working class identity and a white racial identity takes place in the early nineteenth century.

• 1800-1860: More specifically, he is arguing that the idea of the “white worker” was a produced in the sixty years that led up to the Civil War.

• The North: Even more specific he is making this case for 1/2 of the country.

In the early nineteenth century between 1840-1860, several million Irish-folk emigrated to the United States. They were fleeing famine and oppression at the hands of the English. When these Irish immigrants arrived in the United States they did not receive a warm welcome. Greeted as “savages” of a degenerate race they found themselves struggling to survive in an alien and an urban environment. Often they lived alongside Northern blacks and even shared some degree of intimacy for a time. As Roediger explains there was no precedent for anti-black racism in Ireland and no good explanation for the virulent racism that began to spread among many members of the Irish-American community. Rather than adopting a common working class identity that they could share with free black, Irish immigrants chose to define themselves as white. This meant casting their lot with the hated English, but anxiety creates strange bedfellows.

B. The self-formation of a “white working class” as an oppositional strategy that grew out of anxieties about wage-labor, social status and economic survival. Drawing on the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, he says that despite all the hardships and travails of the new, industrial mode of production—despite its low pay, its long hours, its sped up production, its dependency on a fickle employer, its uncaring attitude toward unskilled workers—these hardships were compensated in part by the public and psychological wage of being free, white citizens (12). At the end of the day, the white worker had rights and privileges that simply were not extended to blacks. They could go to assemblies and vote and participate in the civic life of the community. They could also, if they so chose, commit acts of violence against blacks, acts of violence that routinely went unpunished. By stressing their white identity, the white working class makes sure that it not the lowest strata of society. If nothing else they stood above the black slave.

What we also see here is the formation of white racial identity predicated on what it is not. Whiteness was an empty category that only comes into focus when contrasted with blackness. Thus the freedom of the white worker could only considered freedom when compared with the status of blacks in the United States. Similarly, other aspects of the white working class identity came alive only against the backdrop of blackness.

• “The making of the Irish worker into a white worker was thus a two-sided process. On the one hand… Irish immigrants won acceptance as whites among the larger American population. On the other hand…the Irish themselves came to insist on their own whiteness and on white supremacy. The success of the Irish in being recognized as white resulted largely from the political power of the Irish and other immigrant voters. The imperative to define themselves as white came from the particular ‘public and psychological wages’ whiteness offered to a desperate rural and often preindustrial Irish population coming to labor in industrializing American cities” (137).

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