Organizing Workers in the Shadow of Slavery: Global Inequality, Racial Boundaries, and the Rise of Unions in American and British Capitalism, 1870-1929

"Rudi Batzell offers a material account of how racial hierarchies formed in the United States, framing the history of racism in the labor movement as a question not of biases and prejudice but of access to property and land. Racism is often considered a question of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. The accused racist will sometimes deploy the tired old defense that he or she "has black friends,""

"This book is undeniably a valuable contribution to the scholarship of race and labor. As such, Batzell, a professor and historian at Lake Forest College, sets out to offer a material-economic account of American racism, arguing that "combating racial domination at its roots requires changing not what people believe, but what they earn and own." To Batzell, this question, at least in the United States, begins with the aftermath of the American Civil War."

Racial hierarchies in the United States originated and solidified through material inequalities tied to access to property, land, earnings, and ownership rather than solely through individual prejudice. Legal frameworks emphasize "racial animus"—hostile feelings—to prove discriminatory motive, which obscures structural economic mechanisms that produce racial boundaries. Common defenses like claiming cross-racial friendship presuppose racism as only a matter of belief. Meaningful dismantling of racial domination requires redistribution of economic assets and increased access to property and earnings. The roots of these material inequalities in the U.S. trace back to the aftermath of the Civil War and shaped labor organizing and union development.

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