The American Non-Dilemma: Racial Inequality Without Racism

Prologue

xvii Prologue G rowing up in a white, working-class family in the 1950s Midwest , I gave very little thought to and was rarely confronted with issues of racial inequality. Instead, I was interested in issues of class inequality and the future effects of economic changes on blue-collar workers. I have vague memories from high school of knowing that race was important, but probably like many others then and now, I thought that it did not have much to do with me. I watched with fear and concern as the civil rights movement unfolded on TV, and I noticed a strange sense of discomfort regarding the one or two African American kids who attended my large high school. Although I barely knew their names and never interacted with them, I was aware of a sense that somehow they were different when they walked down the hall, but I did not give it much thought. My concerns were about jobs, the economy, and, for myself, how to get a college education. My parents, neither of whom had graduated from high school, were lucky members of the working class because they both had steelworker jobs and together they could make a decent living. In the 1950s, however , steelworkers were subject to periodic strikes, and I remember my parents’ noticeable apprehension during those times and the focused look on my mother’s face as she counted the dimes in the booklets she had been collecting for a rainy day when she would need them to make ends meet. I also remember knowing how different my life was from the lives of my relatives who did not make it into jobs in the steel factory. Some lived in abject poverty, sometimes in rural areas without running water, and almost always without steady jobs. It was quite clear to me even as a child that my life was different from the lives of my poorer relatives primarily because my parents belonged to a very strong union that made the company they worked for pay them decent wages. Interestingly , my parents did not necessarily see it that way. They had very little good to say about the union and a surprising degree of loyalty and gratitude to the company. They seemed to believe that the company was magnanimous and the union was corrupt, but they did follow closely DiTomaso.indb 17 12/12/2012 7:28:18 AM xviii Prologue and intently when negotiations were under way, and they knew to the penny what their jobs paid. When I graduated from high school, my parents were proud that I was able to get a job as a secretary in the same steel company where they worked. They took it as a personal commendation of their good work records. Their highest aspirations for my brother and for other males in the family were for them to obtain jobs at this company, and my brother did so. He, however, went one step further and entered an apprenticeship in a skilled trade; my parents held only semiskilled jobs. At one time my mother, my father, my uncle, my brother, several cousins, and my brother-in-law all worked at the same company. After two years in my secretarial job at the company, during which time I attended college part-time in the evenings, I left to attend college full-time. My parents thought this was a foolish decision on my part. They insisted that I get documentation from the company indicating that I could return to my secretarial job at some point in the future if I wished to do so, since this company, like others that were the subject of bidding wages up during World War II, had developed a policy that once you left the company, you could never come back. Because there were few working-class jobs that paid such good wages and offered such good benefits, this policy was a significant threat to anyone who took the company for granted. It was only after I left home to go to college full-time that I was confronted with civil rights as a social movement. I gradually learned more about racial inequality from my college classes. Then, of course, I got on board with others and became a strong proponent of civil rights and of redistributive policies to help the poor. As I took these ideas home, however , I confronted the resistance of my family, especially of my parents’ generation, to such “highfalutin” ideas. In...