The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class

Race, Class, and the Making of White Identity

David R. Roediger’s groundbreaking work asks a question that still unsettles labor history: how did working people, who might have found common cause across racial lines, come to invest so heavily in being “white”? Drawing on the insights of W.E.B. Du Bois and rooted in careful study of antebellum America, The Wages of Whiteness argues that whiteness functioned as a psychological wage—a set of privileges and status that compensated white workers for their exploitation and undercut solidarity with Black workers.

Roediger traces this process from colonial settlement and early republicanism through the industrializing decades before the Civil War. He examines the language of “white slavery,” the role of blackface minstrelsy in shaping white working-class identity, and the specific experiences of Irish-American laborers. The result is a history that does not settle for easy celebration or condemnation of the working class, but instead shows how race has been woven into the fabric of American labor and citizenship.

Why This Edition Matters

This revised edition from Verso includes a new preface by Roediger and an introduction by Kathleen Cleaver, placing the book’s arguments in conversation with more recent scholarship and political struggles. Whether you are a student of history, a union activist, or a reader trying to understand the roots of contemporary racial divisions, this ebook offers a rigorous and provocative foundation for thinking through the tangled relationship between race and class.