Roediger's, "The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class," Roediger reveals a complex connection between nineteenth century white race identity and the development of the American working class. Roediger reveals a long awaited understanding of working-class racism that does not accept the simplistic thought that racism is the result of a psychological need to feel superior to others. He fervently argues that white workers self conceptions were profoundly impacted by a language composed from not only racism, but also a great degree from the growing white workers construction of their own identity (primarily due to the fear of dependency on wage labor).
In the first 2 sections of the book Roediger describes how wage labor and slavery were both growing in rapid numbers in the new nation. The idea of wage labor was new and unsettling to the white working class, and from this fear developed and, "us against them," mentality. Roediger emphasizes how strongly the white working class wanted to quickly distinguish itself from the Black population who they felt needed to be excluded and despised. This provided the foundation for the, "whiteness," identity formed out of the white working class. Differentiation between the two labor groups became an important reassurance of white workers' respectability. This can be more clearly seen in the language changes of work titles: masters became bosses, servants became hired persons. .
Roediger makes clear how important it was to white workers to distinguish their circumstances from chattel slavery. White workers did not see themselves as property to be owned, and did not want others to associate them as such. Roediger uses an argument from David Brion Davis to support this claim. Davis argues that these attacks on chattel slavery made wage labor more easily acceptable. The fear of being associated with chattel slavery encouraged white workers to kindle these feelings of discontent towards the black population in chattel slavery to avoid comparisons to themselves.
