Black in America by Enobong Hannah Branch & Christina Jackson

Author:Enobong Hannah Branch & Christina Jackson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781509531417
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2020-01-27T00:00:00+00:00

Labor and Race-Making in a Historical Perspective

While understanding the experience of emancipated Black slaves in the South is critical to understanding the Black labor market experience, it is much more illuminating to start in the North before emancipation and explore the perceptions and restrictions of free Blacks in the perceived land of opportunity. It clarifies the oversimplified picture of the North as benevolent and exposes the denigration of Blacks nationwide. In The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, Roedinger (2007) documents the evolution of the relationship between Blacks and Irish immigrants from friendship to hostility, showing how the subsequent fight for a clear line of demarcation drove Irish vilification and hatred of Blacks far beyond that of White Southerners at the time. Recall that in the South, Blacks were slaves, legally considered property of their owners. The significant power differential between slave and master led to a paternalistic relationship, as long as Black slaves stayed in their place. However, historian George Fredrickson argues, “if they [Blacks] seek to rise out of their place and demand equal rights with members of the dominant group, they are likely to be exposed to a furious and violent form of racist reprisal” (2002:93). This is the context under which we must consider the treatment of free Blacks in the North.

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