how race survived U.S. history

How Race Survived U.S. History: From Settlement and Slavery to the Obama Phenomenon
David Roediger


The title of Roediger's work, How Race Survived U.S. History, implies that the central point of the book is to address the question of how something as divisive as the idea of race could have survived throughout the years. This could also be phrased as he puts it in his introduction: how the United States has handled the "American dilemma" of how to reconcile "the nation's commitments to freedom and equality…with the enduring practices of slavery and segregation" (xii). What Roediger truly ends up arguing, however, is that rather than being a confusing and contradictory aspect of American culture, the construction of race and racism "was a response to sharp social divisions among settlers and sought to create an ersatz unity among whites" (3). In other words, racial constructions were instrumental, not coincidental.

In support of this argument, he provides a discussion of how race has been central to ideas of citizenship and nationalism throughout history. Overall, Roediger provides a valuable and comprehensive discussion of the significance of race in U.S. history, validating his eventual argument that the eradication of racism requires active effort rather than being something that will just happen on its own.

Among the points that I would have liked to see explored in more detail, however, are the connections that Roediger makes between Christianity, whiteness, and the right to freedom early on in the book, as he discusses colonial Virginia. At this point, Roediger argues, lines of racial division were not yet in place, with class distinctions more fundamental than racial ones. In 1676, during Bacon's rebellion, "Negroes and servants" were "offered freedom 'from their slavery'" by authorities if they opposed the rebellion, while "rebels…feared that they would all be made into 'slaves, man, woman & child.'" Roediger's analysis of this phrasing is that "the promise of liberation" shows "how imperfectly class predicaments aligned with any firm sense of racial division" (5).

To some extent, I question this analysis, and would have appreciated more primary-source wording to support Roediger's interpretation. The phrasing he quotes seems to me to suggest more that "Negroes" were fundamentally considered to be of a different category; after all, if there were truly no racial divisions, but the authorities wanted to make clear that their offer of freedom extended to all, it seems as though it would have been phrased as "servants, Negroes and others," or something similar. The actual wording instead seems to imply that "Negroes" are inherently unfree. I also would not put as much emphasis on the promise of liberation as Roediger seems to, given that terms like "slavery" and "freedom" still are tossed around today without consideration of their history.

Roediger goes on to address the ways that "Christian" became synonymous with "white," e.g., with the passage of laws that dictated whippings for "any 'negroe or other [Indian] slave' attacking 'any Christian'" (6). Particularly as Roediger goes on to discuss settlers' concerns about the "laziness" of Indians or Africans—and their fear that Englishmen might be similarly "lazy," if provided the chance—more exploration of how Christianity appeared as a marker and separator meaning whiteness would have been both interesting and valuable.

For instance, was this focus on Christianity as the defining factor because the colonists were already separating themselves from England? Was it because of the lingering legacy of the Crusades, where the primary distinction was between Christians and "heathen"? Did it relate to the colonists' identification of themselves as fleeing from religious persecution, thereby creating religion as their primary aspect of identity?

While these may seem to be idle or insignificant questions, the answers to them are relevant, because they would explain more about the creation of concepts of what "an American" was and is. For instance, if the reason for the initial differentiation between Christian/not-Christian was due to the colonists' self-identification on the basis of religion, then this would play into the construction of white womanhood that Roediger addresses, albeit briefly, later. If Christianity is the determining factor of whiteness and later citizenship, then accusing a woman of being unchaste simultaneously divests her of whiteness, citizenship, and religion all at once—an application of heteropatriarchal white supremacy.

Roediger states that his goal in the book is to provide "a spare, vigorous, and accessible account of the ways white supremacy has lurked, morphed, and survived" because such an account "is most likely to reach large numbers of busy and perhaps skeptical readers" (xiv). He does provide that, but in some areas, his efforts to provide a "spare" account result in eliding significant ways that raciality has affected and affects women. The skeleton of that information is within the book, and he repeatedly references "white maleness" as the power structure being created, but I have concerns about an account that reinforces the historical invisibility of women, whether black, white, Indian, or Asian; in many ways, they exist in Roediger's narrative only to indicate racial differentiation between men.

This is particularly apparent in the afterword, when Roediger discusses the events of the 2008 primaries in regard to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The book was published prior to the results of all the primaries and the presidential election, although Roediger did make a statement two days post-election. His commentary is relatively vague, but he does state that "insistent efforts to brand Obama 'not one of us'—playing on his name and his alleged sympathy for Islam—fell equally flat," an assertion I'm not sure I agree with. Would the question of Obama's citizenship ever have been raised if he were white? Would claims that he is not Christian have been made if he were white? Would Sarah Palin have the support she does if she weren't presenting herself as a "real American," in contrast to Obama's presumably dubious Americanness?

The issues of gender, race, and religion should be as present in any discussion of the 2008 election or current reactions to Obama as they should have been in any discussion of pre-Revolutionary-War Virginia. Roediger points out that Obama "portrays today's issues as simply cutting across racial lines," an accusation that is accurate—and perhaps the only reason he was able to be elected (228). But we cannot portray racial issues as cutting across gender lines, either. The history that Roediger provides is more a history of race and men's labor than a universal U.S. history, and as such, it is extremely valuable in identifying and explaining many aspects of the creation, reinforcement, and persistence of white male supremacy over men of color, but not in providing a full consideration of the ways that other factors have also furthered that hierarchy (e.g., how care work reinforces the structure of capitalist white supremacy).