Why read Workers on Arrival?

Book cover of Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America

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"An eloquent and essential correction to contemporary discussions of the American working class."-The Nation

From the ongoing issues of poverty, health, housing and employment to the recent upsurge of lethal police-community relations, the black working class stands at the center of perceptions of social and racial conflict today. Journalists and…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Workers on Arrival as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Sam Mitrani

Author

While the origins of northern police in this country were rooted in the development of a new set of class relations among white people, discussions of policing today cannot be untangled from the history of African Americans.

Trotter shows that Black people have always been a crucial part of this country’s workforce. Racism itself is rooted in the ways that Black workers’ position has been shaped by capitalists, non-black workers, and Black workers themselves, and this has been true since the dawn of slavery.

In his last chapters, Trotter brilliantly illustrates how the problems created for the entire working class…

From Sam's list on The best books for understanding why both liberal and conservative takes on the police miss the real problem.