We must bring together a new coalition: The challenge of working-class white ethnics to color-blind conservatism in the 1970s

International Labor and Working-Class History

Volumn 74, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 148-170

  Deslippe, Dennis ^a  

^a MARSHALL UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 55849116050     PISSN: 01475479     EISSN: 14716445     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0147547908000227     Document Type: Review

References (116)

1. Geno Baroni, "Ethnicity and Public Policy," in Pieces of a Dream: The Ethnic Workers' Crisis with America, ed. Michael Wenk, S.M. Tomasi, and Geno Baroni (New York, 1972), 8;
2. Lawrence M. O'Rourke, Geno: The Life and Mission of Geno Baroni (New York, 1991), 88.
3. "The Kerner Report," in Takin' It to the Streets: A Sixties Reader, ed. Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines (New York, 1995), 426-27;
4. Baroni, "Ethnicity and Public Policy;" 10.
5. Madeline H. Engel, "1st National Consultation on Ethnic America: A Report on the Proceedings," International Migration Review 3:1 (1968): 50-51;
6. O'Rourke, Geno, 91, 92, 95.
7. Michaela di Leonardo, The Varieties of Ethnic Experience Kinship, Class, and Gender Among California Italian-Americans (Ithaca, NY, 1984), 130;
8. Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York, 2001), 80-84.
9. Jefferson Cowie, "Vigorously Left, Right, and Center," in Bailey and Farber, eds., America in the Seventies (Lawrence, KA, 2004), 76;
10. Kim Moody; An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism (New York, 1988), 88.
11. Andrew Levison, The Working-Class Majority (New York, 1974), 51;
12. E.E. LeMasters, Blue Collar Aristocrats: Life-Styles at a Working-Class Tavern (Madison, WI, 1975), 24;
13. Sar A. Levitan and Robert Taggart, III, "The Blue-Collar Worker Weathers the 'Ordeal of Change," in Levitan, ed., Blue-Collar Workers: A Symposium on Middle America (New York, 1971), 36.
14. Otto Feinstein and Rolland H. Wright, "The Ethnic Revival: Work and Community Satisfaction and the Work Ethic," in Immigrants and Migrants: The Detroit Ethnic Experience, ed. David W. Hartman (Detroit, 1974), 245;
15. Colin Greer, "Remembering Class: An Interpretation," in Divided Society: The Ethnic Experience in America, ed. Colin Greer (New York, 1974), 6, 34;
16. Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, "The Hidden Injuries of Class," Greer, ed., Divided Society, 268.
17. Nancy MacLean, Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (Cambridge, MA, 2006);
18. Matthew Frye Jacobson, Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights America (Cambridge, MA, 2006);
19. Van Gosse and Kavita Philip, "Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Social Wage of Whiteness," Radical History Review 81 (2(8)1): 9;
20. Bruce Nelson, Divided We Stand: American Workers and the Struggle for Black Equality (Princeton, 2001), 293.
21. Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, 2006), 221;
22. Jacobson, Roots Too, 7, 8-9.
23. The scholarship on "color-blind conservatism" is considerable; some recent examples include Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton, 2005),
24. Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton, 2007);
25. Christopher Bonastia, Knocking on the Door: The Federal Government's Attempt to Desegregate the Suburbs (Princeton, 2006);
26. Michael K. Brown, Martin Carnoy; Elliott Currie, Troy Duster, David B. Oppenheimer, Marjorie Shultz, and David Wellman, Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society (Berkeley, 2003).
27. Michael Harrington, The Other America: Poverty in the United States (New York, 1961), 18;
28. Mario D. Fantini and Gerald Weinstein, The Disadvantaged: Challenge to Education (New York, 1968), 5;
29. Edmund W. Gordon and Doxey A. Wilkerson, Compensatory Education for the Disadvantaged (New York, 1966), 1-2, 138;
30. Christopher Jencks and David Riesman, The Academic Revolution (New York, 1968), 143, 147.
31. Diane Henry, "A Survey of Italian-Americans Finds Government is Ignoring Their Needs, New York Times, Feb. 6, 1975: 14;
32. Richard Gambino, Blood of My Blood: The Dilemma of the Italian-Americans (Garden City, NY, 1974), 308;
33. Paul Cowan, "Jews without Money, Revisited," Village Voice, Sept. 1972,
34. reprinted in Greer, ed. Divided Society, 359;
35. Typescript, Geno Baroni, "EEOC Implications for the Working Class in a Pluralistic Society," Rutgers University Symposium, Nov. 28-29, 1975, box 32, folder: Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs Collection, Special Collection, University of Notre Dame Library, South Bend, IN [hereafter cited as NCUEA. Collection]; Andrew M. Greeley, Ethnicity in the United State. s: A Preliminary Reconnaissance (New York, 1974), 42, 53;
36. John D. Skrentny, "Policy-Elite Perceptions and Social Movement Success: Understanding Variations in Group Inclusion in Affirmative Action," American Journal of Sociology111:6 (2006): 1785.
37. Barbara Mikulski, "Who Speaks for Ethnic America?" New York limes, Sept. 28, 1970: 72;
38. Andrew M. Greeley, Why Can't They Be Like Us.? America's White Ethnic Groups (New York, 1971), 156;
39. Judith Magidson, The Reacting Americans: An Interim Look at the White Ethnic Lower Middle Class (New York, n.d. [1969]), 8;
40. Walter H. Waggoner, "A White N.A.A.C.P. Set Up in Newark," New York Times, May 4, 1973: 79.
41. Richard Servo, "Italian Americans Here Unite to Fight 'Reverse' Bias," New York Times, June 28, 1974: 71;
42. "Racial Slurs No Longer Laughing Matter," Italian Tribune [Newark, NJ], April 4, 1970,
43. Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Lucido v. Cravat& Swaine & Moore, 425 F. Supp. 123 (1977);
44. John Lucido to Thaddeus Kowalski, March 26, 1976, box 30, folder: Ethnic Discrimination, NCUEA Collection.
45. Jefferson Cowie, "Nixon's Class Struggle: Romancing the New Right Worker, 1969-1973," Labor History 43:3 (2002): 257-83;
46. Durr, Behind the Backlash, 148;
47. Dean J. Kotlowski, Nixon's Civil Rights: Politics, Principle, and Policy (Cambridge, MA, 2001), 98.
48. Skrentny, "Policy-Elite Perceptions," 1783, 1785, 1795-96, 1799; Federal Register 36:250 (Dec. 29, 1971): 25,165.
49. Servo, "Italian-Americans Here Unite," 71; Clipping, "Admission Demanded by Same Standards for Blacks, Indians," St. Paul Dispatch, May 2, 1970, box 26, folder: DeFunis Case, 1972-74,
50. Intergroup Relations Records, American Jewish Committee Library; New York, NY; Press release, "Coalition Report/News of Italian American Achievement," Aug. 1975, box 30, folder: Employment, NCUEA Collection; Aloysius Mazewski to The President, April 7, 1980, box 1, folder: Affirmative Action, 2/80-10/10, Records of the Office of the Special Assistant for Ethnic Affairs, Stephen Aiellos Subject Files, 1980-81, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, GA.
51. MacLean, Freedom is Not Enough, 185-224;
52. Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, Troubling the Waters: Black-Iewish Relations in the American Century (Princeton, 2006);
53. Samuel Rabinove to Bert Gold, Feb. 17, 1972, box 186, folder: Quotas, Jan.-Aug., 1972, Bertram Gold Papers, American Jewish Committee Library, New York, NY; Bert Silver to William Raspberry, March 18, 1974, box 268, folder: Affirmative Action, Miscellany, Feb.-Oct., 1974, National Council of Jewish Women, Washington, D.C. Office, Library of Congress Manuscripts Room, Washington, D.C.; Richard Gambino, "The Ethnic Resolution and Public Policy," in The Idea of a Modern University, eds. Sidney Hook, Paul Kurtz, and Miro Todorovich (Buffalo, 1974), 208;
54. Nathan Glazer, Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy (New York, 1975), 187.
55. 41 CFR 60-50, 401:243-245 (1973);
56. Skrentny, Policy-Elite Perceptions," 1785-87;
57. James G. Driscoll, "Reverse Discrimination' Means ... Scram White Man," National Observer July 13, 1974: 1;
58. Charlayne Hunter, "Job Rights Gain Called Imperiled," New York. Times, Dec. 1, 1975: 17;
59. DeFunis v. Odegaard, 416 U.S. 312 (1974);
60. Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978).
61. O'Rourke, Geno, 45;
62. Jack Rosenthal, "2 Parties Charged with Manipulation of Ethnic Groups," New York Times, Nov. 25, 1971: 27.
63. Baroni, "Ethnicity and Public Policy," 5-6; Arthur Naparstek to Geno Baroni, n.d. [1972], box 30, folder: Working Americans Ethnic Factor, NCUEA Collection; Clipping, Gus Tyler, "Middle Americans' Share of Pie Remains in the Sky," n.s., n.d. [1970], box 30, folder: Employment, NCUEA Collection; Barbara Mikulski, "The Ethnic Neighborhood: Leave Room for the Bocci Ball," in Wenk, Tomasi, and Baroni, eds., Pieces of a Dream, 52.21.
64. Murray Friedman, "Excerpts," 8, and Joseph McCloskey; "Response to Irving Levine," 20, both in Defusing the White Backlash: Proceedings of the .Philadelphia Conference on the Problems of White Ethnic Americans, University of Pennsylvania, June 15, 1968, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Typescript., Geno Baroni, "EEOC Implications for the Working Class in a Pluralistic Society," Rutgers University Symposium, Nov. 28-29, 1975, box 32, NCUEA Collection;
65. Typescript, "Preliminary Report: Demographic Trending Analysis on Ethnic and Racially Identified Neighborhoods, 1960-1970," July 16, 1975, box 5, folder 7, National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA [hereafter cited as NCUEA/HSP Collection].
66. Baroni quoted in Mexican American Cultural Center/NSF, U.S. Foundations and Minority Group interests (June 30, 1975), box 5, folder 6, NCUEA HSP Collection; Basil Whiting to Harold Howe, Aug. 2, 1972, box 2, folder 1,NCUEA HSP Collection;
67. O'Rourke, Geno, 91, 104;
68. Press release, National Urban League, "Jordan Charges Quota Issue Designed to Split Labor-Civil Rights Alliance," Sept. 19, 1972, Container 114, folder: Congressional Black Caucus, Affirmative Action, Leadership Conference for Civil Rights Records, Series I, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
69. Baroni, "Ethnicity and Public Policy," 11; Mikuiski, "Who Speaks for Ethnic America?" 72.
70. Typescript, Geno Baroni, "EEOC Implications for the Working Class in a Pluralistic Society," Rutgers University Symposium, Nov. 28-29, 1975, box 32, NCUEA Collection; Mikuiski, "The Ethnic Neighborhood," 52;
71. Greer, "Remembering Class," 23;
72. clipping, S. James Zafiraw, "Urban Ethnic Concerns for Educational Leadership: An Interview with Monsignor Geno Baroni," Notre .Dame Journal of Education n.d. [1973], p. 61, box 2/folder 15, NCUEA/HSP Collection.
73. George Meany, "New Dimensions for Labor's Urban Ethnic Priorities," Wenk, Tomasi., and Baroni, eds., Pieces of a Dream, 205.
74. Typescript, "Report of Joint Meeting between UAW National Staff, CAP Directors, and NCUEA National Staff," Cleveland, July 22-23, 1974;
75. Jerome Ernst to NCUEA/UAW Participants, n.d. [1974], both in box 2, folder 43, NCIJEA. Collection.
76. Typescript, Geno Baroni, "EEOC Implications for the Working Class in a Pluralistic Society," Rutgers University Symposium, Nov. 28-29, 1975, box 32, NCUEA Collection; Nelson Lichtenstein, State of the Union: A Century of American Labor (Princeton, 2002), 204-07;
77. Dennis A. Deslippe, "Do Whites Have Rights?': White Detroit Policemen and 'Reverse Discrimination' Protests in the 1970s," Journal of American History 91 (2004), 952-57.
78. Typescript, Geno Baroni, "EEOC Implications for the Working Class in a Pluralistic Society," Rutgers University Symposium, Nov. 28-29, 1975, box 32, NCUEA Collection; Arthur Naparstek and Gale Cincotta, "Executive Summary: Inner-City Disinvestment," n.d. [1972], box 30, folder: Employment, NCUEA Collection; Baroni, "Ethnicity and Public Policy," 11; John Herbers, "1,600 From Ethnic Groups Organize Protest Against Institutions They Say Are Destroying Central Cities," New York Times, Mar, 20, 1972: 29.
79. Paul Wrobel, Our Way: Family, Parish, and Neighborhood in a Polish-American Community (South Bend, IN, 1979), 138-40;
80. clipping, "City's Blacks, Poles Form Uneasy, Powerful Alliance," Detroit Free Press, June 16, 1969, I.A., box 18, folder: Black-Polish Conference, 1969-72, Ken and Sheila Cockrel Collection, Walter Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI [hereafter cited as Cockrel Collection].
81. Black-Polish Conference Bi-Weekly Logs, June 5-June 21., 1972; June 22-July 1, 1972; July 3-July 14, 1972, box 105, folder 3, New Detroit Collection, Walter Reuther Library of Libor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI; "Urban Renewal in Hamtramck," Black-Polish Conference Newsletter 1:2 (Jan. 1972), box 18, folder: Black-Polish Conference, 1969-72, Cockrel Collection; Minutes, Detroit Black-Polish Conference Board Meeting, April 5, 1972;
82. Typescript, "Project Descriptions," n.d. [1972], both in box 105, folder 3, New Detroit Collection, Walter Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI.
83. Philip Nyden, "Rank-and-File Organizers and the United Steel Workers of America," Insurgent Sociologist 8 (Fall 1978), 21-22;
84. Daniel Nelson, Farm and Factory: Workers in the Midwest, 1880-1990 (Bloomington, IN, 1995), 82-84.
85. Typescript, "Brief History: Agenda for Steering Committee," October 11, 1970; Andrew Grutka to Dear Father, November 9, 1970; clipping, George Crile, "CCC Welcomed Nationally," Post-Pibune [Gary, IN];
86. George Crile, "CCC Participants Diversified," Gary Post-Tribune [Gary,IN], December 13, 1970, all in box 1, Calumet Community Congress Collection (unprocessed), Indiana University Northwest Calumet Regional Archives [hereafter cited as CCC Collection];
87. Editorial, "Ethnics Unite," Washington Post, December 9, 1970: A24.
88. Alinsky's life and organizing philosophy are the subject of several books including Sanford D. Horwitt, Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky - His Life and Legacy (New York, 1989);
89. Mark Santow, "Running in Place: Saul Alinsky, Race, and Community Organizing," in Marion Orr, ed., Transforming the City: Community Organizing and the Challenge of Political Change (Lawrence, KA, 2007), 28-55;
90. R David Fink, The Radical Vision of Saul Alinsky (New York, 1984);
91. Saul Alinsky, Rules ,for Radicals (New York, 1971).
92. Clipping, "CCC Fights Noise, Litter," Post-Ribune [Gary, IN], April 24, 1972;
93. clipping, "CCC Tells Employees of Inland Tax," Post-Tribune [Gary; IN];
94. clipping, "Lake Units to Protest Rate Hikes," n.d. [1971];
95. typescript, "CCC Executive Committee, Second Session," December 16, 1970, all in box 1, CCC Collection[unprocessed]; Bill Kovach, "Gary Groups to Fight Dirty Air," New York Times, December 7, 1970; 51;
96. Martin Connelly to Jerry Ernst, April 18, 1972, box 5, folder 1, NCUEA Collection, HSP.
97. Clipping, "CCC Split Group is Now CAL," Post-Tribune [Gary, IN], December 14, 1972; clipping, Tom Knightly, "Cat Fails, Area Units Cut Funds," Post-Tribune [Gary, IN], December 27, 1972;
98. clipping, George Crile, "Area Church Leaders Rap Krupta Charges," Post- Tribune [Gary, IN], November 25, 1970;
99. clipping, George Crile, "Krupta Turns Fire on Calumet Community Congress," Post-Tribune [Gary, IN], November 24, 1970;
100. clipping, "Right Wingers Attempt CCC Meeting Disruption," Post-Tribune [Gary, IN], November 16, 1970, all in box 1, CCC Collection [unprocessed].
101. McGreevy, Parish Boundaries, 214-15;
102. Jeanie Wylie, Poletown: Community Betrayed (Urbana, 1989).
103. Jefferson Cowie, "Portrait of the Working Class in a Convex Mirror: Toward a History of the Seventies," Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 2:3 (2005): 93;
104. Thomas J. Sugrue and John D. Skrentny, "The White Ethnic Strategy," in Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s, eds. Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer (Cambridge, MA, 2008), 174;
105. O'Rourke, Geno, 178.
106. Jonathan Reider, Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn against Liberalism (Cambridge, MA, 1985), 118;
107. Jacobson, Roots Too, 319;
108. David A. Hollinger, "Amalgamation. and Hypodescent: The Question of Ethnoracial Mixture in the History of the United States," American Historical Review 108:5 (2003): 1381.
109. David W. Stowe, Review of Whiteness of a Different Color, by Matthew Frye Jacobson and The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, by George Lipsitz, Journal of American History 86:3 (December 1999), 1359;
110. Ronald T. Formisano, Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991);
111. Robert Bruno, Steelworker Alley: How Class Works in Youngstown (Ithaca, NY, 1999);
112. Todd Michael Michney, "Changing Neighborhoods: Race and Upward Mobility in Southeast Cleveland" (Ph.D. diss., University. of Minnesota, 2004);
113. John T. McGreevy, Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century North (Chicago, 1996);
114. Kenneth D. Durr, Behind the Backlash: White Working-Class Politics in Baltimore, 1940-1980 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2003).
115. The two most well-known critiques of "whiteness studies" by historians are Eric Arnesen, "Whiteness and the Historians' Imagination," International Labor and Working-Class History 60 (Fall 2001): 3-92;
116. and Peter Kolchin, "Whiteness Studies': The New History of Race in America," Journal of American History 89:1 (June 2002), 154-73.