Roediger, David R(andall) 1952-

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ROEDIGER, David R(andall) 1952-

PERSONAL: Born July 13, 1952, in Columbia, IL; son of Arthur E. (a quarry worker) and Mary Ann (a teacher; maiden name, Lind) Roediger; married Jean Marie Allman (a professor of African history), 1979; children: Brendan David, Donovan Joseph. Education: Northern Illinois University, B.S., 1975; Northwestern University, Ph.D., 1980. Politics: "Socialist internationalism." Hobbies and other interests: Tennis, travel.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of History, 309 Gregory Hall, MC-466, 801 South Wright St., University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801; fax: 217-333-2297. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Yale University, New Haven, CT, assistant editor of Frederick Douglass Papers, 1979-80; Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, lecturer in history, 1980-81, Mellon assistant professor, 1981-83, assistant professor, 1984-85; American Council of Learned Societies and Exxon Educational Foundation, fellow, 1983-84; University of Missouri—Columbia, from assistant to associate professor, 1985-92, professor of history, 1992-94; University of Minnesota, professor of history, 1995-2000, chair of American Studies Program, 1996-2000; University of Illinois, Kendrick Babcock Professor of History, 2000—. Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co., president of board of directors, 1992—. Students for a Democratic Society, president, 1970; Workers Defense, vice-chairperson, 1978-80; participant in anti-apartheid activities in Chicago and Missouri, 1983—.

MEMBER: American Studies Association, Organization of American Historians, Missouri Conference on History.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fellow of American Council of Learned Societies, 1983-84; Lloyd Lewis fellow and grant from National Endowment for the Humanities, 1989-90; Purple Chalk Teaching Award, University of Missouri-Columbia, 1989; Gustavus Myers Award for the Study of Human Rights in the United States, Outstanding Book Award, 1992; Outstanding Academic Book Award, Choice, 1992; Merle Curti Prize, Organization of American Historians, 1992, for The Wages of Whiteness; McKnight Research Award, University of Minnesota, 1999-2000.

WRITINGS:

(Editor and author of introduction) Covington Hall, Dreams and Dynamite: Selected Poems, Charles H. Kerr (Chicago, IL), 1985.

(Editor, with Franklin Rosemont) Haymarket Scrapbook, Charles H. Kerr (Chicago, IL), 1986.

(With Philip S. Foner) Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day, Greenwood Press (New York, NY), 1989.

(Editor, with Phyllis Boanes) Irving S. Abrams, Hay-market Heritage: The Memoirs of Irving S. Abrams, introduction by Joseph M. Jacobs, Charles H. Kerr (Chicago, IL), 1989.

The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, Verso (New York, NY), 1991, revised edition, 1999.

(Editor) Fellow Worker: The Life of Fred W. Thompson, Charles H. Kerr (Chicago, IL), 1993.

Towards the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays on Race,Politics, and Working Class History, Verso (New York, NY), 1994.

(Editor and author of introduction) Black on White:Black Writers on What It Means to Be White, Schocken Books (New York, NY), 1998.

(Editor, with Martin H. Blatt) The Meaning of Slavery in the North, Garland (New York, NY), 1998.

(Editor and author of introduction) Covington Hall, Labor Struggles in the Deep South and Other Writings, Charles H. Kerr (Chicago, IL), 2000.

(Editor and author of introduction) W. E. B. Du Bois, John Brown, Modern Library (New York, NY), 2001.

Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2002.

Contributor of articles and reviews to history journals and other magazines, including Tennis Arsenal, Progressive, Massachusetts Review, Monthly Review, Southern Exposure, and New Left Review. Books editor, In These Times, 1980-81; member of editorial board, Gateway Heritage, 1989—.

SIDELIGHTS: David R. Roediger's historical analyses of what it means in the United States to be white has placed him at the forefront of the ongoing debate on race and racism in America. His publications begin by linking race and class, and examine how white laborers in the New World benefited psychologically as well as monetarily by differentiating themselves from black laborers, that is, from slaves, an idea he borrowed from W. E. B. Du Bois. With the dawn of the revolutionary era came an end to indentured servitude (a kind of limited white slavery), Roediger explains in The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, and the attribute of whiteness took on additional value. In discussing the nineteenth century, the author examines such phenomena as minstrelsy, black-face riots, and the question of the ferocity of the Irish immigrant workers in their racist attacks on black workers. "This is powerful stuff, provocatively and boldly advanced in ways to which a short review cannot begin to do justice," remarked Daniel J. Walkowitz in the Journal of American Ethnic History. Indeed, The Wages of Whiteness did provoke intense debate in the decade following its publication. In a review of the revised edition in Labor History, Carl Nightingale dubbed this "the history book that got everybody talking about whiteness, from anthropologists to legal theorists to theologians to activists."

Among Roediger's several other books on the invention of whiteness and its role in American history is an anthology of writings on the topic by black writers. Gathering fifty pieces of poetry, essays, stories, and excerpts from an autobiography, a novel, and a play, works dating from revolutionary days to the present, Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White is a "trailblazing anthology," according to Donna Seaman in Booklist. A contributor to Lip Magazine online similarly called this volume "astounding in its scope, insightfulness, intensity, and power." This critic described Roediger's writings as part of "the new abolitionism," a growing disaffection with the institutionalization of white power: "Not yet a decade old, the new abolitionist movement—the organized effort to abolish the white race as a social category . . .—reflects a widespread and growing grassroots ferment." And of Roediger's place in this movement, this critic asserted: "he is unquestionably one of contemporary abolitionism's leading thinkers." Although Louis J. Parascandola, writing in Library Journal, noted that Roediger excludes Malcolm X and other Nation of Islam writers, the resulting volume is nonetheless one "that should go a long way in helping us to understand America's troubled racial relations," the critic concluded.

Roediger once told CA: "Growing up in a working class, trade union family during the civil rights movement, I knew early that laboring people wanted better lives and could, at times, act decisively to win them. My earliest historical writings, profoundly influenced by the Trinidadian writer C. L. R. James, centered on the ways in which American workers expressed a vision of a new society by casting their fight for a shorter working day as a fight for dignity, education, health, political participation, and, in a little-appreciated but revealing phrase, free time.

"At the same time, however, my youth and later experiences as a New Left, labor, and anti-apartheid activist also suggested the considerable extent to which race shaped and disfigured the dreams and aspirations of white workers. For a good while I mused on the curious combination of racism, love of soul music, and worship of African-American athletes which characterized those of us attending high school in the 1960s in the quarrying town in which I grew up. Only with long exposure to the sophisticated work of Sterling Stucky and W. E. B. Du Bois, however, and with the example of a growing body of feminist historiography which historicized masculinity, did I find a broad question which could frame my musings: How, when, and why did large numbers of U.S. workers get the terrible idea that it was important to think of themselves as white labor, rather than simply as labor?

"An early result of attempts to answer this question for the years prior to 1877 was The Wages of Whiteness. In the book I argued that whiteness 'paid off,' not only or mainly in wage differentials between the races, but also as a way for white workers who distanced white workers from black slaves to make peace with the sacrifices required by industrial capitalism.

"A book of my essays on race and class, Toward the Abolition of Whiteness, continues work on these themes with a special emphasis on race, gender, and ethnicity. Shades of Pale asks why many workers in our century continue to prize whiteness."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Studies International, October, 1998, review of The Meaning of Slavery in the North, p. 92.

Booklist, February 15, 1998, Donna Seaman, review of Black on White, p. 954; April 15, 2002, Vernon Ford, review of Colored White, p. 1366.

Bookwatch, August, 1998, review of Black on White, p. 11.

Choice, February, 1996, review of Towards the Abolition of Whiteness, p. 903.

Hungry Mind Review, spring, 1998, review of Black on White, pp. 21, 53, review of Towards the Abolition of Whiteness, p. 55, and review of The Wages of Whiteness, p. 56.

Journal of American Ethnic History, fall, 1994, Daniel J. Walkowitz, review of The Wages of Whiteness, p. 98.

Journal of American History, review of Towards the Abolition of Whiteness, p. 82.

Labor History, February, 2000, Carl Nightingale, review of The Wages of Whiteness, p. 93.

Library Journal, May 1, 1998, Louis J. Parascandola, review of Black on White, p. 98.

Minnesota Review, fall, 1996, review of Towards the Abolition of Whiteness, p. 49.

New York Times Book Review, March 11, 1990, p. 15.

Reference and Research Book News, August, 1998, review of The Meaning of Slavery in the North, p. 44; November, 1998, review of Black on White, p. 49.

Village Voice Literary Supplement, September, 1994, review of The Wages of Whiteness, p. 11.