Book description
At the vanguard of the study of race and labour in American history, David R. Roediger is the author of the now-classic The Wages of Whiteness , a study of racism in the development of a white working class in nineteenth-century America. In Working Toward Whiteness , he continues that…
Why read it?
1 author picked Working Toward Whiteness as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This book made me rethink everything I thought I understood about race and culture. David Roediger is among a group of academics (Matt Wray and Nell Irvin Painter are others) who have been exploring the idea of race as a construction, an invention of relatively recent origin.
It–to borrow the words of a student of mine with whom I shared this book’s findings–“blew my mind” to discover that markers of identity I was taught to consider fixed and immutable (i.e., black and white) were, in fact, created and enforced for the benefit of capitalist oligarchs, first in order to justify…
From Leonard's list on The best books to read if you plan on being Black (or want to understand those who do).
If you love Working Toward Whiteness...
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