Angel Martinez’s Reviews > The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class > Status Update

Irish made a significant voting bloc in 1850s. Granting them the political power to "become white." To the chagrin of abolitionists, some Irish-Americans decided to defend their newly acquired white identity.

Same kind of discourse is happening re latinos today. Sadly some of my fellows are too quick to identify and protect their own "whiteness" (citizenship as a proxy for whiteness) & being "one of the good one"

Slave and servant were used interchangeably in the antebellum south. Association "servant" with slavery meant servants in the US north were euphemistically referred to as "help"

And since there was no "servant" there was no "master." Therefore, the USA could claim to be classless. What a trick these Americans played

"...book argues that whiteness was a way in which white workers responded to a fear of dependency on wage labor and to the necessities of capitalist work discipline" (13).

Argument: "... working class formation and the systematic development of a sense of whiteness went hand in hand for the US white working class"

Herrenvolk democracy mentioned. Liberalism: A Counter History (Losurdo) is the only other book ive read which mentions it too and I really liked that one