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Divided We Stand: American Workers and the Struggle for Black Equality
Divided We Stand is a study of how class and race have intersected in American society--above all, in the "making" and remaking of the American working class in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Focusing mainly on longshoremen in the ports of New York, New Orleans, and Los Angeles, and on steelworkers in many of the nation's steel towns, it examines how European immigrants became American and "white" in the crucible of the industrial workplace and the ethnic and working-class neighborhood.
As workers organized on the job, especially during the overlapping CIO and civil rights eras in the middle third of the twentieth century, trade unions became a vital arena in which "old" and "new" immigrants and black migrants forged new alliances and identities and tested the limits not only of class solidarity but of American democracy. The most volatile force in this regard was the civil rights movement. As it crested in the 1950s and '60s, "the Movement" confronted unions anew with the question, "Which side are you on?" This book demonstrates the complex ways in which labor organizations answered that question and the complex relationships between union leaders and diverse rank-and-file constituencies in addressing it.
Divided We Stand includes vivid examples of white working-class "agency" in the construction of racially discriminatory employment structures. But Nelson is less concerned with racism as such than with the concrete historical circumstances in which racialized class identities emerged and developed. This leads him to a detailed and often fascinating consideration of white, working-class ethnicity but also to a careful analysis of black workers--their conditions of work, their aspirations and identities, their struggles for equality. Making its case with passion and clarity, Divided We Stand will be a compelling and controversial book.
As workers organized on the job, especially during the overlapping CIO and civil rights eras in the middle third of the twentieth century, trade unions became a vital arena in which "old" and "new" immigrants and black migrants forged new alliances and identities and tested the limits not only of class solidarity but of American democracy. The most volatile force in this regard was the civil rights movement. As it crested in the 1950s and '60s, "the Movement" confronted unions anew with the question, "Which side are you on?" This book demonstrates the complex ways in which labor organizations answered that question and the complex relationships between union leaders and diverse rank-and-file constituencies in addressing it.
Divided We Stand includes vivid examples of white working-class "agency" in the construction of racially discriminatory employment structures. But Nelson is less concerned with racism as such than with the concrete historical circumstances in which racialized class identities emerged and developed. This leads him to a detailed and often fascinating consideration of white, working-class ethnicity but also to a careful analysis of black workers--their conditions of work, their aspirations and identities, their struggles for equality. Making its case with passion and clarity, Divided We Stand will be a compelling and controversial book.
440 pages, Paperback
First published December 18, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 8, 2023
4.5/5.
Meticulously researched, I must have found at least 30 books I want to read based on the notes from this book alone. This book uses case studies of waterfront labor (longshoreman) and steel workers to examine questions of occupational hierarchy/stratification, race and class, and unions.
I think what this books makes clear, but did not articulate, is that the best way to understand occupational hierarchy and how it interacts with race/class in the US is as a caste system. At the negative pole of the race hierarchy are Black people; at the positive pole of the hierarchy are White people. The boundaries of whiteness can expand or shrink over time, but can never absorb Black people as whiteness is defined in opposition to a Black other (I would also argue whiteness can never absorb peoples who cannot pass as white). As new immigrant groups from Europe or other parts of the world migrated to the US they slotted into this hierarchy, partly based on the prevailing “race science” and whether the group was Catholic or not, and partly based on the material resources associated with the group moving in (so Germans and Scandinavians end up higher than Irish and Eastern/Southern Europeans). But they (with very few exceptions) end up slotting in to this hierarchy above Black people.
There is also a hierarchy of occupations based on skill/credentialing and the disutility of doing the job that ends up also coding with pay. Jobs coded as “servile” or with particular physical discomfort or with particularly obvious powerlessness end up at the bottom.
These two hierarchies then overlap, and groups that end up with relatively more status fiercely protect their relative status from those below them while trying to move into the group above them. In what is likely a natural human impulse, they want to ensure their children have as much status as they do so try to implement practices so that their children inherit their relatively higher status occupations. But this makes occupational sorting hereditary and coded with racial status. The process of becoming “more white” is the process by which immigrant groups move into higher status occupations and compete less with Black people for work and thereby associate less with Black people. This is the definition of caste.
What is particularly interesting is, as this book articulates, how unionism both tried to collapse and reinforce this caste system. Left unions, which espoused rhetoric about the equality of all workers, had leadership that tried to push forward issues of racial equality, as did some Black workers, and some rank and file white workers, especially those more associated with the Left. But, many rank and file white workers, who had benefitted from this existing caste system isn’t the past, opposed collapsing this hierarchy (eg, allowing Black people into higher status jobs) both because of potential material repercussions (their son may not get the same job) and because they may lose their own status by association with (pollution by) lower status groups. And so unions, using race-neutral language like seniority or adherence to rank and file democratic principles, shut Black workers out of higher status jobs (or jobs in entire sectors). In such an environment, some Black workers turn against the union: maybe the only chance they have to work at a higher paying higher status job with less hazards that they know they can do is to scab, or they have to sue the union to force them to change seniority policies. Then white union members, who spent so much efforts shutting Black workers out, can then feel justified in turning against Black workers as “betraying” the union.
Extending the caste metaphor further, it would be quite interesting to interact this with gender. Much of “womens work” is similar across racial groups. So it’s harder to have occupational sorting in the same way. This relates to arguments about how gender interacts with caste: in some ways women are outside caste, in others, particularly through endogamy, choice of sexual partners, and the transmission of culture to children, women embody caste. This text does not address this.
One thing that remains poorly articulated is what, exactly, are the “wages of whiteness”. Is it psychic and social? Or it is material? Or both? If material, and a group is acting to defend its material interests from a lower status group, does that change our interpretation of the wages of whiteness as opposed to if it were primarily psychic?
Meticulously researched, I must have found at least 30 books I want to read based on the notes from this book alone. This book uses case studies of waterfront labor (longshoreman) and steel workers to examine questions of occupational hierarchy/stratification, race and class, and unions.
I think what this books makes clear, but did not articulate, is that the best way to understand occupational hierarchy and how it interacts with race/class in the US is as a caste system. At the negative pole of the race hierarchy are Black people; at the positive pole of the hierarchy are White people. The boundaries of whiteness can expand or shrink over time, but can never absorb Black people as whiteness is defined in opposition to a Black other (I would also argue whiteness can never absorb peoples who cannot pass as white). As new immigrant groups from Europe or other parts of the world migrated to the US they slotted into this hierarchy, partly based on the prevailing “race science” and whether the group was Catholic or not, and partly based on the material resources associated with the group moving in (so Germans and Scandinavians end up higher than Irish and Eastern/Southern Europeans). But they (with very few exceptions) end up slotting in to this hierarchy above Black people.
There is also a hierarchy of occupations based on skill/credentialing and the disutility of doing the job that ends up also coding with pay. Jobs coded as “servile” or with particular physical discomfort or with particularly obvious powerlessness end up at the bottom.
These two hierarchies then overlap, and groups that end up with relatively more status fiercely protect their relative status from those below them while trying to move into the group above them. In what is likely a natural human impulse, they want to ensure their children have as much status as they do so try to implement practices so that their children inherit their relatively higher status occupations. But this makes occupational sorting hereditary and coded with racial status. The process of becoming “more white” is the process by which immigrant groups move into higher status occupations and compete less with Black people for work and thereby associate less with Black people. This is the definition of caste.
What is particularly interesting is, as this book articulates, how unionism both tried to collapse and reinforce this caste system. Left unions, which espoused rhetoric about the equality of all workers, had leadership that tried to push forward issues of racial equality, as did some Black workers, and some rank and file white workers, especially those more associated with the Left. But, many rank and file white workers, who had benefitted from this existing caste system isn’t the past, opposed collapsing this hierarchy (eg, allowing Black people into higher status jobs) both because of potential material repercussions (their son may not get the same job) and because they may lose their own status by association with (pollution by) lower status groups. And so unions, using race-neutral language like seniority or adherence to rank and file democratic principles, shut Black workers out of higher status jobs (or jobs in entire sectors). In such an environment, some Black workers turn against the union: maybe the only chance they have to work at a higher paying higher status job with less hazards that they know they can do is to scab, or they have to sue the union to force them to change seniority policies. Then white union members, who spent so much efforts shutting Black workers out, can then feel justified in turning against Black workers as “betraying” the union.
Extending the caste metaphor further, it would be quite interesting to interact this with gender. Much of “womens work” is similar across racial groups. So it’s harder to have occupational sorting in the same way. This relates to arguments about how gender interacts with caste: in some ways women are outside caste, in others, particularly through endogamy, choice of sexual partners, and the transmission of culture to children, women embody caste. This text does not address this.
One thing that remains poorly articulated is what, exactly, are the “wages of whiteness”. Is it psychic and social? Or it is material? Or both? If material, and a group is acting to defend its material interests from a lower status group, does that change our interpretation of the wages of whiteness as opposed to if it were primarily psychic?
June 5, 2015
If you aren't interested in unionism and how unions related to Civil Rights this isn't the book for you. Nelson jumps a lot in his History telling. The chapter may begin in 1951 and leap back to trace history before moving forward. As an Historian this was an irritating trait of his writing.
While slightly dated this book gives an excellent history of longshoremen and steelworkers in America and draws the necessary connections to racial equality in the workplace.
A good resource and foundational text for anyone doing work on unionism and race in America.
While slightly dated this book gives an excellent history of longshoremen and steelworkers in America and draws the necessary connections to racial equality in the workplace.
A good resource and foundational text for anyone doing work on unionism and race in America.
April 6, 2016
Generalizes two narrow cases to the country as an whole. Not convincing even within that narrow scope. Divisions appeared to be ethnic, not racial.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews