In 1907, pioneering labor historian and economist John Commons argued that U.S. management had shown just one "symptom of originality," namely "playing one race against the other." In this eye-opening book, David Roediger and Elizabeth Esch offer a radically new way of understanding the history of management in the United States, placing race, migration, and empire at the center of what has sometimes been narrowly seen as a search for efficiency and economy. Ranging from the antebellum period to the coming of the Great Depression, the book examines the extensive literature slave masters produced on how to manage and "develop" slaves; explores what was perhaps the greatest managerial feat in U.S. history, the building of the transcontinental railroad, which pitted Chinese and Irish work gangs against each other; and concludes by looking at how these strategies survive today in the management of hard, low-paying, dangerous jobs in agriculture, military support, and meatpacking. Roediger and Esch convey what slaves, immigrants, and all working people were up against as the objects of managerial control. Managers explicitly ranked racial groups, both in terms of which labor they were best suited for and their relative value compared to others. The authors show how whites relied on such alleged racial knowledge to manage and believed that the "lesser races" could only benefit from their tutelage. These views wove together managerial strategies and white supremacy not only ideologically but practically, every day at workplaces. Even in factories governed by scientific management, the impulse to play races against each other, and to slot workers into jobs categorized by race, constituted powerful management tools used to enforce discipline, lower wages, keep workers on dangerous jobs, and undermine solidarity. Painstakingly researched and brilliantly argued, The Production of Difference will revolutionize the history of labor race in the United States.

The Production of Difference: Race and the Management of Labor in U.S. History

History

Roediger, David R.

Esch, Elizabeth D.

Americas

Oxford University Press

Business & Money

Economics

Our Own Time provides the first full account of the movement to shorten the working day in the United States. Combining the narrative and trade union emphasis of traditional labor history with the focus on culture and the labor process characteristic of contemporary labor history, the book offers an illuminating reinterpretation of the history of the U.S. labor movement from the colonial period onward. The authors argue that the length of the working day or week historically has been the central issue raised by the American labor movement during its most vigorous periods of organization.Beginning with a picture of working hours in colonial America and the early republic, Roediger and Foner then analyze the ideology of the movement for a ten-hour workday in the early nineteenth century. They demonstrate that the ten-hour issue was a key to the dynamism of the Jacksonian labor movement as well as to the unity of male artisans and female factory workers in the 1840s. The authors proceed to examine the subsequent demands for an eight-hour day, which helped to produce the mass labor struggles of the late nineteenth century and established the American Federation of Labor as the dominant force in American trade unionism. Chapters on labor movement defeats following World War I, on the depression years, and on the lack of progress over the last half-century complete the study. Our Own Time will be an ideal supplemental text for courses in U.S. labor and economic history.

Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day (Contributions in Labor Studies)

Foner, Philip S.

Praeger

This contributor volume brings the best work of such established historians as Morris Schappes, Nathan Godfried, and Eric Foner together with the newer voices of Elizabeth Sharpe and Jennifer Bosch. Its eleven essays challenge the boundary between the older, institutional labor history and the more recent social histories of working people. By combining a focus on culture, women's history, and race relations that is characteristic of the best of the latest working class history with an emphasis on formal protests, leadership, and power, the volume suggests that a truly new labor history will reflect a variety of concerns and draw on diverse inspirations.
In three chapters elucidating new features of labor biography and working-class politics, the volume's opening section considers George Edwin McNeill, the Socialist Party's efforts to free Eugene Debs, and the Socialist Party's left wing. Turning to women in labor history, the next section includes two chapters on Union W.A.G.E., an organization of mainly white, working class women, and Ellen Gates Starr, co-founder of Hull House. In a third section on African-American history, two scholars consider Black labor and African-American laborers in the Reconstruction era. The final section considers culture, education, and the working class. These chapters analyze the role of broadcasting and the Socialists' effort to establish an alternative radio station; labor education in the 1920s; the literary portrayal of sailors in Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, and the victims of the Rapp-Coudert Committee. By placing workers and their organizations convincingly within the context of their culture, this volume helps to demonstrate the ways the labor movement has remade this nation and how the nation has shaped the labor movement.

Culture, Gender, Race, and U.S. Labor History (Contributions in Labor Studies)

Shapiro, Herbert

Kent, Ronald C

Markham, Sara

At the vanguard of the study of race and labor in American history, David Roediger is one of the most highly respected scholars in his field. He is also the author of the now-classic The Wages of Whiteness , a study of racism in the development of a white working class in nineteenth-century America. In Working Toward Whiteness , he continues that history into the twentieth century, recounting how American ethnic groups that are considered white today, such as Jewish-, Italian-, and Polish-Americans, once occupied a confused racial status in their new country.While some historians have claimed that these immigrants were white on arrival,” Roediger paints a very different picture, showing that it wasn't until the 1920s (ironically, just when immigration laws became much more restrictive), that these ethnic groups definitively became part of white America, primarily thanks to the nascent labor movement and a rise in home-buying.From ethnic slurs to racially restrictive covenants the real estate agreements that ensured all-white neighborhoods Working Toward Whiteness explores the murky realities of race in twentieth-century America. In this masterful history, which is sure to be a key text in its field, David Roediger charts the strange transformation of these new immigrants into the white ethnics” of America today.

Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs

Basic Books

How did immigrants to the United States come to see themselves as white? 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.

Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: the Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs

David R. Roediger's powerful book argues that in its political workings, its distribution of advantages, and its unspoken assumptions, the United States is a "still white" nation. Race is decidedly not over. The critical portraits of contemporary icons that lead off the book--Rush Limbaugh, Bill Clinton, O.J. Simpson, and Rudolph Giuliani--insist that continuities in white power and white identity are best understood by placing the recent past in historical context. Roediger illuminates that history in an incisive critique of the current scholarship on whiteness and an account of race-transcending radicalism exemplified by vanguards such as W.E.B. Du Bois and John Brown. He shows that, for all of its staying power, white supremacy in the United States has always been a pursuit rather than a completed project, that divisions among whites have mattered greatly, and that "nonwhite" alternatives have profoundly challenged the status quo. Colored White reasons that, because race is a matter of culture and politics, racial oppression will not be solved by intermarriage or demographic shifts, but rather by political struggles that transform the meaning of race--especially its links to social and economic inequality. This landmark work considers the ways that changes in immigration patterns, the labor force, popular culture, and social movements make it possible--though far from inevitable--that the United States might overcome white supremacy in the twenty-first century. Roediger's clear, lively prose and his extraordinary command of the literature make this one of the most original and generative contributions to the study of race and ethnicity in the United States in many decades.

Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past

University of California Press

"A scholarly study of the real roots of what Jacobson calls 'America's largely assimilated but ultimately "unmeltable" ethics.' It's a startling point of view for readers who are accustomed to the self-congratulatory myth of America as a beacon of liberty to which the 'huddled masses' of the world look with longing."―Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times

Special Sorrows: The Diasporic Imagination of Irish, Polish, and Jewish Immigrants in the United States

Jacobson, Matthew Frye Frye

In this thought-provoking volume, David R. Roediger has brought together some of the most important black writers throughout history to explore the question: What does it really mean to be white in America? From folktales and slave narratives to contemporary essays, poetry, and fiction, black writers have long been among America's keenest students of white consciousness and white behavior, but until now much of this writing has been ignored. Black on White reverses this trend by presenting the work of more than fifty major figures, including James Baldwin, Derrick Bell, Ralph Ellison, W.E.B. Du Bois, bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker to take a closer look at the many meanings of whiteness in our society. Rich in irony, artistry, passion, and common sense, these reflections on what Langston Hughes called "the ways of white folks" illustrate how whiteness as a racial identity derives its meaning not as a biological category but as a social construct designed to uphold racial inequality. Powerful and compelling, Black on White provides a much-needed perspective that is sure to have a major impact on the study of race and race relations in America.

Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White

Schocken

In this thought-provoking volume, David R. Roediger has brought together some of the most important black writers throughout history to explore the question: What does it really mean to be white in America? From folktales and slave narratives to contemporary essays, poetry, and fiction, black writers have long been among America's keenest students of white consciousness and white behavior, but until now much of this writing has been ignored. Black on White reverses this trend by presenting the work of more than fifty major figures, including James Baldwin, Derrick Bell, Ralph Ellison, W.E.B. Du Bois, bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker to take a closer look at the many meanings of whiteness in our society. Rich in irony, artistry, passion, and common sense, these reflections on what Langston Hughes called "the ways of white folks" illustrate how whiteness as a racial identity derives its meaning not as a biological category but as a social construct designed to uphold racial inequality.Powerful and compelling, Black on White provides a much-needed perspective that is sure to have a major impact on the study of race and race relations in America.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Roediger, David R.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Roediger, David R.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Roediger, David R.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Production of Difference: Race and the Management of Labor in U.S. History

The Production of Difference: Race and the Management of Labor in U.S. History

Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day (Contributions in Labor Studies)

Culture, Gender, Race, and U.S. Labor History (Contributions in Labor Studies)

Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs

Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: the Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs

Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past

Special Sorrows: The Diasporic Imagination of Irish, Polish, and Jewish Immigrants in the United States

Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White

Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White