The+Wages+of+Whiteness

**__The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class.__**
Here are the framing questions for our discussion of the SECOND half of the book. Please remember to identify supporting evidence fomr the book in both our discussion and your comparative book review.
 * How does the racializing of terms like "coon," 'buck," and "Mose" reflect changes in racial attitudes among antebellum white workers? How do the changes in mass celebrations and mobbing also reflect these changes?
 * What function did minstrelsy play in white-working-class culture in the antebellum period? What were some of the issues addressed in minstrel shows? How does Roediger's analysis of minstrelsy compare to that of Wilentz and Stoew & Grimsted?
 * How were African Americans and Irish immigrants similar in the antebellum period? How were they different? By what means and for what purposes did the Irish try to separate themselves from African Americans and become "white"?

Here are the framing questions for our discussion of the first half of the book. Please remember to identify supporting evidence from the book in both our discussion and your comparative book review.
 * According to Roediger, why is race a "problem among whites"? What are some of the shortcomings that he identifies in Marxist scholarship on work and the American working class? How is whiteness a "wage"? Why is language so important to Roediger's argument?
 * For what purpose did Roediger write the second chapter? Before settling on race for dividing workers, what other criteria were used? Why were they abandoned? How did the terms, "slave/slavery," "freeman," and "mechanic" change over time? How does Roediger's attention to words differ from that of Wilentz?
 * What was the connotation of the word "hireling"? How did the term "white" come to be associated with the terms "mechanic" and "slave"? What does Reodiger mean by "//herrenvolk// republicanism"?
 * How was the term "white slave" used to unite white workers? Where does Mike Walsh fit into this story? How did abolitionsim divide northern workers? What is the signficance of the shift from the term "white slavery" to the term "free labor"?

It seems as though race is a “problem among whites” because their main objective and goal was to have control and power over all other races. With this in mind, whites would have act upon and justify their belief. According to Roediger, it seems as though whiteness is a” wage” due to the belief that if an individual was white then he/she was automatically secure with having freedom and independence. Because being white was meaningful and valued, individuals who were categorized in this race from birth earned their importance and value in society. The white race earned their status and superiority in life for the reason that their skin color is white. Moreover, by birth, the white race is naturally superior economically, politically and socially, beyond one’s control. -Khalida

In the book "The Wages of Whiteness" the author gives various names of writers and thier argument on what caused racism, how racism is classified and how racism could be stopped. I dont think that racism is ever going to stop. Racism has been going on for years and even with slavery ending, racism still existed. There will always be someone that doesnt like this race or that race. I also believe that in the state and in the capital their is racism. I know that in the state and in the capital there are a group of people that are not happy that Obama is president. I dont think there is ever going to be a time where there is no racism towards African Americans. In some states there is still a strong hatred towards African Americans and we are living in 2009. Macielle Donohue

What is intriguing about the terms "coon," "buck," and "Mose" is that these were first associated with whites and not blacks. As Roediger discusses in chapter five, whites began to construct a sense of projection to isolate themselves from blacks. White workers, especially those within the working class, projected their anxieties onto blacks. Antebellum white workers felt a need to place themselves above blacks in order to obtain a higher status so they utilized racist attitudes to keep themselves a part from blacks. Also, antebellum white workers began to see blacks as "Anticitizens," as Roediger puts it and they try to exclude blacks from civic affairs in order to hold on to some semblance of power and capital in an ever increasing capitalist and competitive world. Now the question is how do blacks erase the label of "anticitizens?" Or do they? -Teresa Mentz

Chapter 8 the Epilogue A New Life and Old Habits. There seems to have developed a lot of compliczted contradictions between blacks and whites during, before and all the way through tto the beginnings of the Civil War and throughout. On the top of page 173, Newspapers would paradoxically regard heroic slaves who would escape as contrabands who would later become "formidable competitiors for 'white' jobs." I want to know which was more of the truth and which was straight hysteria, were black slaves true competitors for jobs or were they more realistically "Fleeing to the the Union Army Camps, because of the fear of bullets?" --Miozoti Lopez

In summary white workers needed a base for identification that helped them be placed in society as equal to those of wealth and skill; their class of trade and whiteness will not be infected by black freedoms or any other foreign signature for change and the movement of cahnge because urbanization and economic stimulus. On page 97 Roediger explains: **// Just as the languages of class that developed in the United States in the early nineteenth century were shaped at every turn by race, so too did racial language reflect, in a broad sense, changes and tensions associated with class formation.
 * Many words used by white workers were redefined to meet their interpretation of African Americans. It was a form of justification and classification for white workers. From my understanding of the reading, the words 'Buck' or 'Mose' were a form of justification to defined changes taking place during this period of industrialization and urbanization. Changes that many Antebellum white workers were able to succeed in and others fail to accomplish. In a sense white workers were looking over their shoulders because they were insecure about work and their place in society. White workers saw blacks as escape goats politically and racially thus socially. Someone needed to be blamed and distanced from the white workers. Why? White workers needed to feel successful when they were not. White workers needed to feel important and morally right when they were not.

W. Jonathan Varela Agudelo //