In the tiny company I work in, my co-workers are mostly white and male. All the programmers + the sysadmin here are white and male - and they living decidedly cushy lives compared to the vast majority of the white working class (and make suggestions like 'we could pay the cleaner an extract R5 (less than 1 dollar) to clean up the coffee cups we use'). Every couple of weeks they get one of their white, male programmer friends to visit, in the full knowledge that we are likely to hire more programmers in the next couple of months. (I happen to only know one black, male programmer, and no female ones) Thus, the old boys club is maintained.
This 'old boys club' clearly operates in the interest of my white, male co-workers. Clearly it does not operate in the interest of *all* white workers (else I wouldn't come across so many of them working as security guards, begging, etc.), but for these particular white males, it maintains a comfortable little circle.
Appealing to solidarity doesn't get very far with my co-workers, because they are fully aware of their priveledged status, and, as I've pointed out, go to lengths to maintain the material basis for that priveledge. Even the most liberal of then (the sys-admin) looks nervous when you mention affirmative action (no doubt because we all, as white males, fear the insecurity that a more egalitarian spreading of unemployment would bring, myself included). Some sort of ethical appeal has some kind of impact, from time to time, but I think the most practical thing I can do to fight racism here is to ensure that the next programmer who gets hired is not white and male - only by breaking up the white, male clique (which also has results such as identification with the white, female boss, rather than the white+black female lower status workers) will the possibility for solidarity emerge, in my opinion.
So - 'whiteness' functions here as a set of normative assumptions, and is maintained through quite concrete processes. The crass homogeneity of it also in a wierd way also obscures the histories of the workers here - the question 'what are the interests of the workers here' is obscured by the fact that everyone looks 'just the same', and thus the question of working to support people outside of work is never encountered. The racial / gender hierarchy of jobs - white male programmers, 'Coloured' male operations guy, white and 'Coloured' female secretary, black female office cleaner - seems to naturalise an economic hierarchy. The process of unsettling the normal (and changing the racial / gender composition of the workplace is one way to force a debate on this 'normal') is I think fairly crucial in making the social visible.
Peter P.S. the fact that until recently the majority of workers here were white, 20 something single professionals is also important - the influx of married with children workers has also functioned in favour of solidarity, and against individualism, to a small extent. -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844 OpenPGP: 1024D/0517502B : DE5B 6EAA 28AC 57F7 58EF 9295 6A26 6A92 0517 502B