Agreed! May I recommend to the list David Roediger's The Wages of Whiteness? Roediger, by the way wrote an article in the 1980s titled "Ira Steward and the anti-slavery origins of the eight-hour theory" and was co-author of Our Own Time, a history of the movement for shorter hours in the US. I just can't emphasize strongly enough how eloquently the historical intersection of the anti-slavery and eight-hour movements speaks to the present predicament of race and class.
Hey, Joe the plumber was the Republican party's icon of WHITE working classness. He boasted his "10, 12 hour days" and disparaged the "socialism" of progressive taxers who danced (and had the same color skin) as Sammy Davis Jr. Although, we all know Obama is not a socialist, there is precedent for laying some rhetorical flesh on the old spectre. On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 9:18 AM, Seth Sandronsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The U.S. idea of a white race developed and persists due to its contrast > with a nonwhite race. How the nation's working people wrestle with that > contradiction is, I think, a useful sign of a qualitative and quantitative > change in the political balance of forces. -- Sandwichman _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
