Saturday, February 9, 2013
'white slavery' vs. 'black slavery'
I'm about half-way through the book so far, and one thing that I have been noticing is how Roediger seems to think that it would have been so much better to be a 'black slave' in the South than a 'white slave' in the North. Roediger compares how the employers of the 'white slaves' basically just work their employees until they can't work any more. However, in comparison, the slave-owners of the South don't work their black slaves as hard, because they sort of view them as an investment: if they have them to do the work, the work will get done, and they will make money. At some points, it's like Roediger is almost implying that being a slave in the South was like "a walk in the park," and everyone knows from reading about it that it certainly wasn't that way at all. Did anyone else notice this? It really stood out to me, because he does it quite a few times.
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I'm assuming that you are talking about chapter 4. In this chapter, he is examining comparisons made by antebellum workers who are fighting for the right to organize, or for higher wages, etc. Part of their vocabulary is to complain that they are being treated as slaves. But this then raises anxieties. And you have several different reactions--e.g., some say "we are just like slaves" and others say "at least we are not slaves" and still others say "slaves have it better than we do--our slavery is worse." None of these observations is really about slavery. The workers who deploy this language have never seen slavery. Just my observations!
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