How Race Survived US History

Starred review from August 4, 2008
Author and history professor Roediger (The Wages of Whiteness) takes a provocative look at how white elites in the U.S. have managed race for their own political and economic gain, in the process making it one of the defining features of American life. Only a few decades after Europeans' arrival in America, emerging class tensions were leading indentured servants-white and black-to disaffection and, sometimes, rebellion. By enslaving blacks, and giving poor whites dominating roles as overseers or slave catchers, elite whites quashed the emerging fraternity and gave birth to white supremacy. Since, successive generations-from slave holders to factory managers-have manipulated laborers to keep African Americans at the bottom of the heap, while new waves of immigrants secured the benefits of white privilege by distancing themselves from people of color and assimilating. Taking his history through the Clinton era ("How Race Survived Modern Liberalism"), Roediger includes an afterword on "the Obama Phenomenon," finding yet more questions in the African-American senator's triumphant presidential campaign. This rousing, thought-provoking history illuminates the enveloping 400-year-old history of race in America, and the issues he raises are as relevant as ever.

Starred review from December 15, 2008
Probing the puzzle of race in U.S. history, Roediger (history, Univ. of Illinois; "The Wages of Whiteness") quickly examines patterns of race thinking and exploitation in America from settler colonialism to slavery, Jim Crow segregation, overseas empire, globalization, and "Obamamania." He explains race's persistence and power as a defining and distributive social category in American life as the conscious and intentional result of white supremacy. Race-based practices and principles of oppression in America have not been unthinking accidents. Nor have their results been marginal. Race has defined every significant opportunity for Americans from life to premature death, wealth to poverty, confinement to freedom, citizenship to alienation, Roediger argues. Continually repelling forces pushing against the logic of racism, white supremacy has diverted the freedom and openness that might have ensued in America from emancipation, industrialization, mass immigration, modern liberalism, industrial unionism, and civil rights. His incisive analysis and accessible explanation aim to promote an activist consciousness to abolish race-based oppression. Whether cast as splendid or seditious, this provocative little book, while lacking scholarly apparatus, will be much referenced in any serious discussion of U.S. history and political economy, past and present. Essential for all U.S. history collections.Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

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