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Ever since the beginning of American history, there have been tensions between the different races and ethnicities living in this land. When the first settlers came to America from Europe, all the different nationalities involved dealt with issues with each other and the Native Americans. Skipping ahead a couple hundred years, with the emergence of slavery, the problem with race relations, especially with blacks, reached a horrible peak. Luckily, the people of this country realized that slavery was a horrendous endeavor and it was abolished after a civil war was fought. From that point on, it seems that race relations would take a turn for the better. It has, but the truth is that many blacks in today's America make a good argument in stating that equality has not reached the level it should be. These problems with race relations have touched on every possible topic in American life. One very prevalent area where the problem with race relations has been obvious is labor. While today, it might not seem so, less than a hundred years ago, blacks were excluded from all aspects of labor including union membership, jobs, fair wages, and fair working conditions. Although all of the working class people had the basic problems of poor paying jobs and bad working conditions in common, race and ethnic problems remained prevalent and severely hampered the different races and ethnicities ability to work together to solve these problems as a group instead of as individuals working on their own. Three main contributing factors to this problem were the different wages paid to laborers, the ways in which these laborers were used, and the underlying fear of different races and ethnicities.
A problem that arises when there is a work shortage is obviously that people can't find jobs. This becomes even more of a problem when it is believed that employers are treating their employees unfairly. When thinking of unfair treatment of workers, two things usually come to mind. One is conditions and the other is pay. When looking at wage problems in America, in the early 100s, they can be directly linked to the sudden rise of unions America. Unions were thought of as a way for workers to be able to stand up against employers paying unfair wages. The problem that arose however was the fact that as a basic rule, minorities and especially blacks were paid lower wages than their white counterparts. That is of course when they were even allowed jobs. This imbalance in pay combined with the work shortages of the time produced a problem for unions, who would use strikes as their main weapons against companies. When workers would strike, companies could simply fire the workers and hire "scabs", who would work for less money then what was originally being paid to the union workers. As it turns out, the "scabs" were often times minorities and in many cases black. This in itself helped divide races from joining together to fight for their rights. Whites were often very resentful towards the blacks for taking their jobs, but the blacks and minorities were happy to simply find work. "We didn't understand why they (blacks) went to work when we were out, and I guess they couldn't trust the white people… We lost the union because of that and I didn't think we was ever going to have one again, not with so many coloreds in there." (Halpern, p.74-75) This statement was a white workers response to the Amalgamated Meat Cutters strike that was broken by the company's hiring of black workers to replace the white ones on strike.
Companies realized that hiring "scabs" was an effective way to break union strikes. After a strike was broken, employers often times would not hire the old employees back. When they did, they would often times be very vengeful in their treatment of the workers and in many cases cut wages of the strikers. This would often bring down more heat upon black laborers. Black workers inadvertently gave employers insurance against strikes and therefore weakened a union's effectiveness. In many cases, it was not only wage-problems that arose.
"Black workers were severely hobbled by racism. Employers fomented racial hatred by using blacks as strikebreakers, and the racism of white workers sometimes came back to haunt them. In 1886, for instance, white steelworkers at Steelton, Pennsylvania, founded a Jim Crow benevolent society, then turned around five years later and solicited black support in a strike, but were told by blacks, "we were not wanted at first and will not join under any circumstances."" (Laurie, p.1) Racism in America was already a very common thing, but with employers pitting white workers against blacks, matters only worsened as America went into the great depression. Even though racism was still prevalent in the twenties and thirties, voices of reason did ring out as early as the 180s. W.E.B. Du Bois, an African American sociologist and historian believed that, "Native-born and northern-European-derived workers enjoyed the "wages of whiteness"." (Zieger and Gall, p. 16) "Du Bois and other champions of racial and ethnic minorities concluded that the struggle of blacks for access to America's opportunities had to be conducted as much against a tenacious white working class as against employers." (Zieger and Gall, p.16) Unfortunately, racism was too far ingrained in American society for Du Bois' belief to gain wide-enough acceptance. Even when the point was reached that blacks were being accepted into unions, the division remained due to the lasting racial tensions. An example of this was Philip Weightman. He was a black hog butcher heavily involved in a union, who became a "scab" because of treatment by whites. "Yet during the 11- strike, Weightman crossed the Amalgamated's picket line and remained on the job, his initial enthusiasm for the organization destroyed by the Jim Crow treatment he received at the hands of white members." (Halpern, p.74) This is not to say that all blacks felt this way. Towards the 10s, blacks were beginning to break through the racial barrier, but the work was far from over. It seems that whites did however begin to realize that combining with blacks would help the overall labor movement. It seemed that people were finally starting to head the warnings of union man Samuel Gompers, "If we fail to organize and recognize the colored wage-workers we cannot blame them if they… frustrate our purposes… if common humanity will not prompt us to have their cooperation, an enlightened self-interest should." (Zieger and Gall, p.16) Racism from whites was still very common, and in the cases that whites were willing to organize with blacks to fight employers, that is often where the relationship ended. Many whites still felt that blacks were inferior and did not belong with whites.
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It seems that jobs and money were not the only reasons that racism was so common during the time. It is no doubt that a reason for this hatred of blacks, especially in the South, came from the opinion that blacks were inferior because they were recently slaves. How can a race that has been dominated for so long by another all of a sudden be seen as equal? Blacks were often times looked at as uncivilized savages. This played a major role in keeping blacks and whites from uniting in the labor movement. In many cases, white men and women were afraid to be around blacks. This was especially the case concerning women and children. Whites did not want blacks near their women and children. It is true that in the mining industry, during the 180s, blacks and whites began to unionize together, but that was as far as some whites wanted it. This undoubtedly set the stage for inequalities that would be faced by blacks in not only the working world, but also in the social world. ""Nowhere were the ethics of living Jim Crow more subtle and treacherous," Jacquelyn Dowd Hall observes, "than when they touched on the proper conduct of black men towards white women…." Indeed, the singular power of the social equality charge flowed from its formidable capacity to link African American empowerment and interracial activity in wide-ranging endeavors-schooling, worship, casual recreation, political campaigns, social movements-to the lurid imagery of interracial sex." (Letwin, p.544) These whites were only concerned with the illusion of equality for blacks and only as long as whites would benefit from it.
Unfortunately, racism has been a staple in American history. Things have certainly changed a great deal for the better, and true equality in all aspects is certainly a possibility and in reach, but common class interests among workers did not prevail of racial and ethnic differences until at least the 150s-60s. In the thirties, there was still too much of a racial and ethnic barrier in place for workers to truly unite together. Three main contributing factors to this problem were the different wages paid to laborers, the ways in which these laborers were used, and the underlying fear of different races and ethnicities in the 10s. Although tremendous strides were made during this period, it would be over the next thirty years that fundamental changes would take place.
Halpern, Rick. Down on the Killing Floor. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago. 17
Laurie, Bruce. Artisans into Workers. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago. 18
Letwin, Daniel. Interracial Unionism, Gender, and "Social Equality" in the Alabama Coalfields, 1878-108. The Journal of Southern History, Volume LXI, No. , August 15
Zieger, Robert H. and Gall, Gilbert J. American Workers, American Unions. The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. 186
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