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

by Michael Goldfield

Overview

A magisterial review of the role of racism in the history of American politics

"Goldfield's sweeping account recasts the familiar turning points in our past to show the singular and destructive impact of racism, and its crippling consequences for the development of class-based politics. This bold book will take its place as one of the truly important statements about American political history." —Frances Fox Piven, co-author of Regulating the Poor and The Breaking of the American Social Compact

There is no better way to understand the roots of racial oppression in America and the periodic mass struggles against it than to read Michael Goldfield's classic The Color of Politics: Race and the Mainsprings of American Politics.

How has race determined the course of American history? From the Revolution to the New Deal, from the Civil War to World War II, race has been at the center of virtually every national turning point. In this brilliant book, Goldfield doggedly documents the persistence of racism in the American nation and the heroic massive struggles against it from colonial times to the present, offering a penetrating guide to how we can achieve a more just society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781565843257
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	09/01/1997
Pages:	404
Sales rank:	623,432
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

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

Editorial Reviews

This thorough analysis of the role of race in American political life examines our failure to combat racism from colonial times to the present. Goldfield's (The Decline of Organized Labor) central argument is that at every turning point in U.S. history, race has played a critical role. Failure to deal with the problem, he notes, shows up primarily in the lack of policies to promote racial equality. The author concentrates his criticism on labor organizations, which, he argues, have missed too many opportunities to advance a radical, militant approach to the problems of the poor working classblack and white alike. The strength of his analysis is his meticulous examination of alternative theories before advancing his own. What might have been an academic exercise becomes an involving account of how a social system of racial subordination was perpetuated during eight watershed periods of our history. At present, the author contends, neither major political party is willing to tackle a situation in which politicians appeal to white voters by scapegoating minorities: "Thus, the present period is one of both instability and flux for the system of racial domination and race relations, with the looming possibility for increasing dominance of racial scapegoating." (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

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. Goldfield's discussion of the failure of 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. Unfortunately, the author's undue reliance on secondary sources will reduce the book's appeal to academics, and the number of factual errors (usually minor) limits its value to all readers. An optional purchase for large academic libraries.Thomas H. Ferrell, Univ. of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette

Library Journal

Goldfield (Labor Studies/Wayne State Univ.) traces how race came to be at the heart of America's political vexations, and how and why it stays there.

His survey is most useful in the portions offering an analysis of the past. Expanding W.E.B. DuBois's dictum that the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line, Goldfield endeavors to demonstrate that at critical turning points of political struggle since colonial times (the Revolution, the end of Reconstruction, the Depression and New Deal, etc.), race was again and again central to the outcome. And in his Marxian view, it has been the absence of interracial solidarity among white and black workers during key struggles that has led to two of the defining elements of contemporary politics: the weakness of American labor and an enduringly segregated nation. Exactly why white labor repeatedly failed to support black workers, though, remains elusive in Goldfield's account: The indifference of northern labor to Reconstruction, for example, is repeatedly and unhelpfully attributed to obtuseness. The evasion of this question has consequences for Goldfield's ability to usefully address contemporary politics. While the account of the postWW II period, especially the CIO's failed Operation Dixie, establishes a solid historical context for the recent history of progress and backlash, the chapter on the present offers a summary of macroeconomic shifts and an unobjectionable but familiar left-liberal response to racially coded issues like affirmative action. In short, having successfully postulated the centrality of race to a class analysis of American history, Goldfield fails to provide the logical epilogue and carry that class analysis fully into contemporary racial politics, sketching it out only briefly in short concluding remarks.

Nevertheless, the focused examination of the role of race in shaping a broad range of American movements is enlightening in its own right, and the importance of the subject speaks for itself.

Kirkus Reviews