The Haymarket Square rebellion of 1886 was a watershed
moment in the history of U.S. radicalism. Days after the
first May Day demonstration, Chicago police fired into a
crowd of striking workers, killing four. In response, the
Knights of Labor organized a demonstration at Haymarket
Square for May 4. Near the conclusion of that peaceful rally,
a police unit marched on the demonstrators. Several workers
and police were killed in the resulting melee.
In retrospect, most scholars agree that the labor group
was attacked by the Chicago police violently and with no
provocation. The threat of a powerful movement for social
change had so catalyzed the elite business elements of the
city that a drastic show of force was necessary.
When people invoke the name of Haymarket Square, usually
it is with veneration or disgust (depending on one’s
class). It seems a risk, then, to use Haymarket as a product
name. But Verso Press has done just that with its Haymarket
Series, which "offers original studies in politics,
history, and culture...[that] testify to the living legacy of
political activism and commitment for which [the martyrs of
the Haymarket uprising] gave their lives."
Central to the argument of three of the authors
highlighted by Eugene Rivers is the ideological nature of
white supremacy or race inequality. Scholars Manning Marable
and Barbara Fields have argued that "race" has no
basis in biological or physical reality; race is essentially
a notion or concept. These authors demonstrate that race,
therefore, must serve some ideological and foundational
purpose for it to predominate American history.
CLEARLY THE DEVELOPMENT of racial categories allowed the
domination of people from one continent in the form of
slavery and the genocide of another in the form of Western
expansion. But once the West was "tamed" and slaves
were emancipated, why should false justifications be
continued? What is the continuing purpose of the belief in
white supremacy in its variety of forms?
David R. Roediger, in his accessibly written The Wages
of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working
Class, conjectures that race became a tool of the elite
to offer a concession to the white working class in order to
keep people of common self-interest divided, thereby leaving
real power unchallenged. Roediger, himself a Marxist, also
demonstrates the shortcomings of traditional Marxist
explanations for the continuation of an ideology of
race superiority. He argues that trying to ascribe all race
problems to class issues implies that a class revolution
would "solve" the race issue, and instead he offers
a more insightful evaluation of human nature and U.S.
history.
In The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class
Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America,
Alexander Saxton examines the "intellectual
history" of white racism. In somewhat dense prose, he
traces the development of the Founding Fathers’
justifications for slavery and genocide in order to expand
the territory of the new republic, strengthen its economic
position globally, and build a coalition of people who would
support this new ruling elite even against their own
self-interest.
Theodore Allen, in his The Invention of the White Race:
Racial Oppression and Social Control: Volume One,
examines the transformation of the Scottish, Irish, and
German immigrants into a single, inclusive category of white
people. This "key paradox of American history," as
Allen calls it—the metamorphosis of servants, tenants,
farmers, and merchants into a cohesive group—creates a
democracy built on certain race assumptions.
Thus Allen, to a greater degree than Roediger and Saxton,
concentrates on social control as the basis for the
maintenance of the ideology of white supremacy. By recounting
the history of Irish integration into the American project,
Allen shows decidedly how this control was maintained. The
second volume of Allen’s project, The Invention of
the White Race: The Origins of Racial Oppression in
Anglo-America, is due out in June.
These three books challenge those whose origin hails from
Europe to declare allegiance, to determine if we are in fact
white. When we figure that out, as James Baldwin indicates,
perhaps there may be hope for us all.
Read other articles by:
Hulteen, Bob
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Read other articles by:
Hulteen, Bob
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