African-American workers: New directions in U.S. labor historiography

Trotter, Joe William

doi:10.1080/00236569400890321

Cited by 10 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 8 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Intellectual engagement with the interrelationship between skills, race, and politics is deeply rooted in early 20th-century, Jim Crow–era scholarship and popular treatments of Black workers in the US economy. George T. Surface, A. H. Stone, and other white supremacist writers vehemently argued that Black workers were “innately inferior, inefficient, lazy,” and incapable of “adapting to the [skills] requirements” of the industrial machine (Surface 1909, quoted in Trotter 1994: 497). As such, Stone and other segregationists ignored the deleterious impact of racist ideology and discriminatory labor policies and practices on the African American quest for education, technical know-how, and knowledge in the slaveholding republic and later in the Jim Crow social order that hampered the African American transition from slave to citizen.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Forum on the Politics of Skills

Osterman¹,

Lowe²,

Anderson³

et al. 2022

ILR Review

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The ILR Review invited this group of scholars who work within the fields of sociology, history, and urban planning to share their perspective on the politics of skills. We called on their expertise to draw attention to the politics that drive the definition and development of skill and its use in shaping the rights and voice of workers. The essays in this forum explore the politics of skill along three lines. First, they interrogate the definition and assessment of skill, with particular attention to the ways that structural markers of social difference—such as race, gender, class, and immigration status—shape the valuation of skill. Second, they analyze the ways that the interpretation of skill is shaped by power dynamics at the worksite and in the broader economy. This line of analysis also considers possibilities for industrial renewal and labor mobilization. And third, the essays explore how skill classifications are used to narrow political and civil rights and to justify forms of exploitation and dehumanization.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Forum on the Politics of Skills

Osterman¹,

Lowe²,

Anderson³

et al. 2022

ILR Review

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Such accounts imply that manufacturing contributed substantially, if not singularly, to the making of the black middle class, and its corollary, deindustrialization, led to the unmaking, or deproletarianization, of the black working class (e.g. Katz, 1993: 447; for an especially useful discussion of deproletarianization and African American labor, see Trotter, 1994: 522–3).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting Shibboleths of Race and Urban Economy: Black Employment in Manufacturing and the Public Sector Compared, Chicago 1950-2000

Parks

2010

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite a singular focus on the linked fate of blacks and manufacturing in many accounts of race and urban economy, black workers in Chicago have relied upon the public sector as a critical route to economic security throughout much of the twentieth century. Four significant trends are identified for the period between 1950 and 2000:(1) African Americans were disproportionately concentrated in the public sectorto a greater degree than in manufacturing; (2) both blacks and whites were disproportionately concentrated in manufacturing -blacks only slightly more; (3) Latinos were most disproportionately concentrated in manufacturing yet experienced no aggregate losses over the 50-year period; (4) the disproportionate decline in black male public employment during the 1990s is a marked break from past sector trends of black male employment growth and stability. These findings emphasize the need to reassess the role of the public sector -the postwar economy's 'other' high wage, unionized sector -in racialized accounts of urban economic restructuring. Recognizing the public sector as not only the most pronounced black employment niche, but also as a labor market standards-setter, sharpens our understanding of the racialized impacts of contemporary public employment trends (e.g. privatization) linked to neoliberal political shifts in urban governance.

show abstract

“…Interracial Unionism on the Philadelphia Waterfront 51 do not easily fit within the master narrative of discrimination and exclusion handed down from an earlier generation of labor historians and structural sociologists whose stinging indictments of union racism and stratified labor markets gained added moral force from affirming, in Joe Trotter's words, "the common interests of all workers." 5 For workers of color in particular it was simply assumed that, as victims of systematic exclusion, their overriding objective was inclusion as equals alongside whites, if only they and their often resistant unions would allow it to happen. 6 The task of demonstrating that such interracial coalitions had in fact existed was taken up by the next generation of scholars.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Excluded” By Choice: Dynamics of Interracial Unionism on the Philadelphia Waterfront 1910–1930

Kimeldorf

Penney

1997

Inter. Labor Working-Class Hist.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“Everyone knows,” observed W.E.B. DuBois, writing at the turn of the century, “that in a city like Philadelphia a Negro does not have the same chance to exercise his ability or secure work according to his talents as a white man.” Focusing on what he described as “the practical exclusion of the Negroes from the trades and industries,” DuBois highlighted the role of organized labor in maintaining Philadelphia's segregated economy whereby “each union steadfastly refuses to admit Negroes, and relies on color prejudice to keep up the barrier.”

show abstract

African-American workers: New directions in U.S. labor historiography

Cited by 10 publications

References 8 publications

A Forum on the Politics of Skills

A Forum on the Politics of Skills

Revisiting Shibboleths of Race and Urban Economy: Black Employment in Manufacturing and the Public Sector Compared, Chicago 1950-2000

“Excluded” By Choice: Dynamics of Interracial Unionism on the Philadelphia Waterfront 1910–1930

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About