Towards the Abolition of Whiteness

Description

Towards the Abolition of Whiteness collects David Roediger’s recent essays, many published here for the first time, and counts the costs of whiteness in the past and present of the US. It finds those costs insupportable. At a time when prevailing liberal wisdom argues for the downplaying of race in the hope of building coalitions dedicated to economic reform, Roediger wants to open, not close, debates on the privileges and miseries associated with being white. He closely examines the way in which white identities have historically prepared white Americans to accept the oppression of others, the emptiness of their own lives, and the impossibility of change. Whether discussing popular culture, race and ethnicity, the evolution of such American keywords as gook, boss and redneck, the strikes of 1877 or the election of 1992, Roediger pushes at the boundaries between labor history and politics, as well as those between race and class. Alive to tension within what James Baldwin called ‘the lie of whiteness’, Roediger explores the record of dissent from white identity, especially in the cultural realm, and encourages the search for effective political challenges to whiteness. David Roediger teaches history at the University of Missouri, Columbia. His last book, The Wages of Whiteness, won the Merle Curti Prize for Social History in 1991. "David Roediger has emerged as the leading analyst, critic and interpreter of the role of ‘whiteness’ in US history and culture. His carefully researched and historically grounded writing shows us that white racism has been a central force in US history, and a key component of Euro-American identity, not just an aberration in an otherwise color-blind society." (George Lipsitz, University of California, San Diego) Towards the Abolition of Whiteness Contents Preface Introduction: From the Social Construction of Race to the Abolition of Whiteness PART I The New Labor History and Race 1 ‘Labor in White Skin’: Race and Working Class History 2 The Greatness of Herbert Gutman 3 Precapitalism in One Confederacy: A Note on Genovese, Politics and the Slave South 4 Where Communism Was Black 5 Notes on Working Class Racism 6 The Crisis in Labor History: Race, Gender and the Replotting of the Working Class Past in the United States PART II Studies in Whiteness and the Replotting of US History 7 “The So-Called Mob’: Race, Class, Skill and Community in the St Louis General Strike 8 Gook: The Short History of an Americanism 9 The Racial Crisis of American Liberalism 10 Gaining a Hearing for Black-White Unity: Covington Hall and the Complexities of Race, Gender and Class 11 Whiteness and Ethnicity in the History of ‘White Ethnics’ in the United States Index