The Color Of Politics: Race and the Mainsprings of American Politics

(Paperback)

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A revealing look at the history of racism in the American working class.

Reviews

Goldfield (labor studies, Wayne State Univ.) has written a radical analysis of American political development emphasizing the relationship between race and class. He gives particular attention to five historic "critical periods or turning points": the Colonial era, the Revolutionary War and the development of the Constitution, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Populist movement, and the Depression and New Deal era. These relatively brief periods are said to have had a major impact on the shape of politics during the longer periods in between them. organized labor to unionize Southern workers successfully during the last of these critical periods and the continuing political consequences of that failure are among the more interesting parts of the book....
[...] The focused examination of the role of race in shaping a broad range of American movements is enlightening. . . the importance of the subject speaks for itself.
An involving account of how a social system of racial subordination was perpetuated during eight watershed periods of our history.

Author Bio

Michael Goldfield teaches at the College of Urban Labor and Metropolitan Affairs at Wayne State University in Detroit.