American workers’ identities responded as much to race as to class

Evidence

For Du Bois, the recovery of this last fact became as elementary to revolutionary theory as a recognition of the peasant masses whose revolts in Russia, Mexico, and China had rocked the ruling classes of the twentieth century. … The collective and individual identities of American workers had responded as much to race as they had to class. The relations of production were not determinant. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1438

Categorization

• SEED: Angle worth pursuing: how race as a category destabilizes orthodox Marxist analysis of the American working class, using Du Bois as the hinge figure.
• XREF: Directly connects to the earlier discussion in this book of how orthodox Marxism presumed the proletariat; also connects to Du Bois’s own Black Reconstruction arguments. — connects to: Race fractures the working classes internally in ways class alone cannot explain; Sexism and racial imperialism jointly formed the base of American social structure. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 48; American racism fused Black people into one mass preventing internal class divisions (+7 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1438

Broader Connections

• Race is the lived medium through which class relations are experienced #expands (0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 637
• Race and class must be analyzed as articulated, not causally reduced #expands (0.65)
• English racial order prevented workers from separating class universality from racial particularism #corroborates (0.60)
• Industrial capital weaponized racism to fragment the labor movement #corroborates (0.50)