Discussion articles

WEB DuBois, "White Worker," from DuBois, Black Reconstruction.

Noel Ignatiev, "Black Worker / White Worker," Sojourner Truth Organization, Workplace Papers.

Questions

What are the reasons that poor whites identified with rich white planters rather than poor enslaved Black workers, whose situations were far more similar to their own? Consider what DuBois says the plantation system offered them because they were white as well as what DuBois says they lacked because of their class.

How did Black workers deal with their race and class oppression under slavery? Can you spot continuities between what DuBois said and what Baptist pointed out from last week's reading?

Ignatiev is working off the ideas that DuBois established in Black Reconstruction and applying them to the situation facing white and Black workers in auto factories in northern US cities about 100 years later. The major difference is that slavery is over, but has anything changed in the race relations between workers?