Segregation and the Rise of the White Working Class
The primary theme of the reading entitled "Segregation and the Rise of the White Working Class," which is the third chapter in William Julius Wilson's book The Declining Significance of Race, is the economic reasons for racial subjugation in the United States. The author provides a plethora of evidence that indicates that money and varying economic principles intertwined with class and Marxism were at the heart of the racial issue and antagonism between Whites and Blacks within this country. He examines this theme from a pre-Civil War context in both the North and the South largely viewed through the framework of slavery and its effects in these areas. He also deconstructs this theme after the war in economic and political terms that are largely divided along racial lines.
There are several pieces of evidence that the author uses to marshal this theme. The question of race is treated merely in respect to its economic...
Slavery had a decidedly negative impact on the wages and livelihoods of free whites, who were paid substantially less in states in which slavery was practiced. The author goes on to imply that it was slavery's negative effect on white labor that was the main reason it did not foment in Northern free states, where the political might of free laborers was routinely used to not only prohibit slavery but also to encourage racial discrimination to discourage Blacks from taking jobs away from whites.
The true antipathy between Whites and Blacks, then, both before and after the Civil War, had to do with the former not wanting the latter to take over their jobs and bring their wages down. Thus, immigrant groups such as the Irish went to great lengths to persecute and keep Blacks from becoming substantial forces of labor in areas in which they were not already present (Wilson 48). The end of the…
