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Paul Frymer, Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party.

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Paul Frymer, Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2O08)

LABOUR HISTORIANS have confronted the issue of racism within the labour movement in a variety of ways. Some look at racism as the product of capitalism, serving the best interest of employers. Scholars of whiteness theory explore white workers' engagement in racist activity and how they benefited in many ways from racism. Paul Frymer looks at racism from the realm of institutions. Frymer examines the New Deal administrative state, the labour movement from the 1930s through the 1960s, the civil rights movement during that same time period, and the federal court system. In doing so he shows that institutions, rather than being neutral on the issue of race, promote racism and the separation of labour rights and civil rights.

Black and Blue blames the failure to . produce a labour movement devoted to racial equality not on leaders of unions or civil rights groups, or the rank-and-file, but on the political system. He finds that this failure is "the outcome of a political system that, in its efforts to...

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