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American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor
“[Jones’s] painstakingly researched volume is an invaluable antidote to those who argue that our shameful past has no relevance to our perplexing present.” ―David Kusnet, Baltimore Sun 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.
548 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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August 4, 2019When I took on the task of reading this laborious text it really brought me to an substantial part of American history that I sometimes feel lacks proper attention. While so much of American history can focus on important decision makers and the specific choices and consequences they make, this book's focus is on the agencyless workers and ethnic and racial devisions that have shaped the contemporary class hierarchy and social structure.
The genesis of Jone's American history narrative begins in Virginia, Maryland and Georgia where English colonial gentlemen are endowed with the profit motive policies of the headright system to make these settlements grow, with increasing numbers of servants comes the reward of more claims to land through the headright system. With lacking human capital from meager indentured servants in an alien environment they have no wherewithal to navigate, the initial work place of America was rife with violence, resentment and oppression. Lord have mercy!
Eventually South Carolina introduced slave codes and in forms of chattel labor imported to the continent. With this came the use of race as distinctive separations between different working groups, black slaves and poor whites. As the narrative progresses into the Antebellum South, Jones discusses the role of slave owners developing their slaves' human capital, like training them as blacksmiths or other skilled labor, though these specialized skills were limited and dependent on regions. Cotton production was one economic sector with little specialization development. Getting free work from expert black workers came with the jealousy of poor white workers who worked more dangerous and demeaning jobs. Slave owners might hire out poor whites for dangerous work, like draining a swamp as it was too dangerous to risk their expensive slaves on the project. By the end of the Civil War, when slaves were emancipated, wealthy elites in the South no longer incentivized to give advanced training to blacks and they were quickly relegated to the bottom of labor hierarchies with the Jim Crow laws.
With the North having less blacks, Jones carefully demonstrates that the northern public was just as racist and oppressive to their smaller black populations with the orders of magnitude of social formation having much to do with economics and demographics than folkways imported from overseas. As the North would pass into the post Civil War and Catholics like the Irish and other previously excluded ethnic groups were now entering political participation, under the aegis of the Democratic party, there were now no Irish, no Germans, no Anglos - only whites, putting blacks at the bottom labor hierarchy.
Reading A Peoples' History of the United States by Howard Zinn years back, there was a fleeting mention of the labor movement being stifled by racism. Jone's account provides the entrenched racism within the social structure that most but the rare exception of labor unions did not bar black workers from benefitting from organized labor and if so, put below white union member.
As the narrative moved to late twentieth century, we approach the old conversations of affirmative action but with the complex background of generations of ethnic and racial pecking orders and a greater awareness of class in America. Jones suggests that the old either/or debate needs to be dismantled with a more clear eyed look at class in America. After finishing the book, my best guess on a step forward was regionalizing school funding within metropolitan or state levels.
On a personal level, having worked a number of menial jobs, I felt like Jones' account of the lowest ranks of American history's labor is a testament that more than often it is not the lack of a person being self-made or not trying hard enough that has held them back but rather that their capacity is limited by the labor structures they were bound inside. It's a reminder that my problems pale in comparison but it's a good reminder to remind others that they're good enough.
The book also mentions grist mills and awful lot.
The genesis of Jone's American history narrative begins in Virginia, Maryland and Georgia where English colonial gentlemen are endowed with the profit motive policies of the headright system to make these settlements grow, with increasing numbers of servants comes the reward of more claims to land through the headright system. With lacking human capital from meager indentured servants in an alien environment they have no wherewithal to navigate, the initial work place of America was rife with violence, resentment and oppression. Lord have mercy!
Eventually South Carolina introduced slave codes and in forms of chattel labor imported to the continent. With this came the use of race as distinctive separations between different working groups, black slaves and poor whites. As the narrative progresses into the Antebellum South, Jones discusses the role of slave owners developing their slaves' human capital, like training them as blacksmiths or other skilled labor, though these specialized skills were limited and dependent on regions. Cotton production was one economic sector with little specialization development. Getting free work from expert black workers came with the jealousy of poor white workers who worked more dangerous and demeaning jobs. Slave owners might hire out poor whites for dangerous work, like draining a swamp as it was too dangerous to risk their expensive slaves on the project. By the end of the Civil War, when slaves were emancipated, wealthy elites in the South no longer incentivized to give advanced training to blacks and they were quickly relegated to the bottom of labor hierarchies with the Jim Crow laws.
With the North having less blacks, Jones carefully demonstrates that the northern public was just as racist and oppressive to their smaller black populations with the orders of magnitude of social formation having much to do with economics and demographics than folkways imported from overseas. As the North would pass into the post Civil War and Catholics like the Irish and other previously excluded ethnic groups were now entering political participation, under the aegis of the Democratic party, there were now no Irish, no Germans, no Anglos - only whites, putting blacks at the bottom labor hierarchy.
Reading A Peoples' History of the United States by Howard Zinn years back, there was a fleeting mention of the labor movement being stifled by racism. Jone's account provides the entrenched racism within the social structure that most but the rare exception of labor unions did not bar black workers from benefitting from organized labor and if so, put below white union member.
As the narrative moved to late twentieth century, we approach the old conversations of affirmative action but with the complex background of generations of ethnic and racial pecking orders and a greater awareness of class in America. Jones suggests that the old either/or debate needs to be dismantled with a more clear eyed look at class in America. After finishing the book, my best guess on a step forward was regionalizing school funding within metropolitan or state levels.
On a personal level, having worked a number of menial jobs, I felt like Jones' account of the lowest ranks of American history's labor is a testament that more than often it is not the lack of a person being self-made or not trying hard enough that has held them back but rather that their capacity is limited by the labor structures they were bound inside. It's a reminder that my problems pale in comparison but it's a good reminder to remind others that they're good enough.
The book also mentions grist mills and awful lot.
February 28, 2007
i seem to recall that this book was a very boring one on a very interesting subject. and i read it in one of the more disappointing courses i took in college.
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