David Roediger quotes

“The areas in which I teach are working-class history and African-American Studies and at its best the critical study of whiteness often grows out of those areas. The critical examination of whiteness, academic and not, simply involves the effort to break through the illusion that whiteness is natural, biological, normal, and not crying out for explanation.”
-- David Roediger

Source : Source: www.counterpunch.org

#Break Through Quotes #Class Quotes #Effort Quotes

“Instead of accepting what James Baldwin called the "lie of whiteness," many people in lots of different fields and movement activities have tried to productively make it into a problem. When did (some) people come to define themselves as white? In what conditions? How does the lie of whiteness get reproduced? What are its costs politically, morally and culturally?”
-- David Roediger

Source : Source: www.counterpunch.org

#Lying Quotes #White Quotes #People Quotes

“As I wrote Working toward Whiteness, I came to see one historic task on the New Deal - and one in which it succeeded - as the fostering of fuller U.S. citizenship among immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and their kids. But this very achievement separated poorer and often despised immigrant workers from Europe and workers of color in unprecedented ways.”
-- David Roediger

Source : Source: www.counterpunch.org

#Kids Quotes #Color Quotes #Europe Quotes

“For radical white writers wishing to forge interracial movements of poor and working people, whiteness has also long been a problem, with Alexander Saxton and Ted Allen making especially full efforts to understand whiteness in order to disillusion whites unable to see past the value of their own skins.”
-- David Roediger

Source : Source: www.counterpunch.org

#Past Quotes #Order Quotes #White Quotes

“The New Deal never rethought the draconian racist immigration restriction policies of the 20s, of course, but its electoral base rested significantly on "ethnic" voters, whose activism was both hemmed in and rewarded by the Democrats. Southern and Eastern Europeans were included as secondary leaders of the new industrial unions, and as entitled citizens qualified for social security, unemployment compensation, and fair labor standards protections, even as workers of color were largely left out of key areas of the welfare state.”
-- David Roediger

Source : Source: www.counterpunch.org

#Keys Quotes #Color Quotes #Southern Quotes

“The pioneer labor historian John Commons was not wrong when he wrote around World War One that exploiting and deepening such tensions as outpacing scientific management among U.S. innovations where bossing was concerned. Amidst the general miseries of proletarianization, workers also learned that one source of meager benefits and protections could lie in claiming a white skin.”
-- David Roediger

Source : Source: www.counterpunch.org

#War Quotes #Lying Quotes #White Quotes

“In some ways Jews and the various largely Catholic and often poor European immigrant groups were "white," as the historian Tom Guglielmo has recently put it, "on arrival." Where naturalization law was concerned, for example, ample precedents recognized their ability to become citizens, a right explicitly resting on their "whiteness." But they also remained, as Working toward Whiteness puts it, "on trial" for a harrowingly long time.”
-- David Roediger

Source : Source: www.counterpunch.org

#Law Quotes #White Quotes #Long Quotes

“Not surprisingly, thinkers from groups for whom whiteness was and is a problem have taken the lead in studying whiteness in this way. Such study began with slave folktales and American Indian stories of contact with whites.”
-- David Roediger

Source : Source: www.counterpunch.org

#Taken Quotes #Groups Quotes #Stories Quotes

“I'm very inspired by personal transformation. I'm so inspired when people who have been living with or struggling against significant obstacles break through and reach the other side of that challenge victoriously.”

“There is a linear way in which black comedians are expected to talk about race by all audiences - black people are like this, white people are like this - and it really is hard to break through that. I never was doing it that way.”

“Donald Trump has taken a lot of positions that are anti-establishment. Donald likes the idea that he can maybe break through. Putin obviously likes him.”

Source : Source: www.realclearpolitics.com

“King Hussein of Jordan dedicated his life - I witnessed it in his sleeping as well as waking hours - to trying to break through the impasses keeping people apart. He understood that the security and prosperity of any one of us in this world depends on the security and prosperity enjoyed by others. As Martin Luther King said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." In the Middle East, nothing could be more true.”

“Ten years ago I said, you know, my goal is to be able to get food on the table. What I'm trying to say by that is trying to create a vibrant, capable and effective middle class. The quicker and stronger that we can be able to do this, the easier it is for political reform to move forward.”

“I think the success of democracy is not really police security; it's the presence of a broad middle class. The stronger the middle class of a people is, the less you have to worry about one group coming in and exploiting the democratic process for its own ends.”

“The difference between a gourmet and a gourmand we take to be this: a gourmet is he who selects, for his nice and learned delectation, the most choice delicacies, prepared in the most scientific manner; whereas the gourmand bears a closer analogy to that class of great eaters ill-naturedly (we dare say) denominated, or classed with, aldermen.”

Source : Abraham Hayward (1858). “Biographical and Critical Essays: Reprinted from Reviews, with Additions and Corrections”, p.391

“As labor is the common burden of our race, so the effort of some to shift their share of the burden onto the shoulders of others is the great durable curse of the race.”

“I began to study again, and now for the first time really achieved an understanding of the content of the Jew Karl Marx's life effort. Only now did his Capital become really intelligible to me, and also the struggle of the Social Democracy against the national economy, which aims only to prepare the ground for the domination of truly international finance and stock exchange capital.”

“There're so many things I want to do, like become more media savvy. I am too lazy. But I'm making an effort.”