The Problem of Race in American Labor History

Abstract

Much recent labor history has been devoted to studies of black workers and to the racial practices of labor unions. With some noteworthy exceptions, however, contemporary labor historians have failed to confront the fundamental issue: the historical development of working-class identity as racial identity. Many labor historians continue to underestimate the depth of American racism. They fail to understand its deep roots in a precapitalist past in Europe and America and consequently underestimate the resistance to the elimination of racist practices and institutions in labor movements no less than in society at large. From John R. Commons and Selig Perlman in the early years of the twentieth century to the work of Philip Taft in the 1960s, what usually passed for labor history was really union history. With few exceptions, traditional labor history consisted of institutional studies of labor organizations based largely on an examination of union records. If traditional labor historians and economists such as Commons, Perlman, Taft, and others identified with the Wisconsin School mention black and other nonwhite