Michael Moore

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue May 19 09:27:02 PDT 1998


Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


>One of the sources of the weaknesses of the working
>class has been and still is precisely the fact that it's been divided and
>stratified by race and gender.

Maybe I've been reading too much decadent literature lately, but I have a problem with a formulation like this. Doesn't it assume some kind of originally "pure" working class, undivided and unstratified, that was somehow busted up by some combination of conspiracy and circumstance? But hasn't the working class been formed inseparably from race and gender? Haven't some forms of work been defined as women's work or black work? Hasn't the consciousness of white American workers been shaped for centuries by race and ethnicity? Of course, we want the races and sexes to see their commonalities, but it's not a matter of recovering some lost unity that never was, is it?

Doug



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