Divided We Stand is a study of how class and race have intersected in American society -- above all, in the "making" and remaking of the American working class in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It includes vivid examples of white working-class "agency" in the construction of racially discriminatory employment structures. But Bruce Nelson is less concerned with racism as such than with the concrete historical circumstances in which racialized class identities emerged and developed. This leads him to a detailed and often fascinating consideration of white working-class ethnicity but also to a careful analysis of black workers -- their conditions of work, their aspirations and identities, their struggles for equality. Making its case with passion and clarity, Divided We Stand is a compelling and controversial book.
