At some point in early 2020 I was working on a post about Affirmative Action and although it was partly aimed at the Hard Left (anarchists, Leninists, etc.) I decided to include (towards the end) some thoughts that are more aimed at moderate and liberal Democrats than at progressives. They were about the role of unions in rolling back racism in the white working-class. I did the same sort of thing in a June 2020 post about Black Lives Matter and the Trump administration (that post was aimed at the general population).
In the first month after the George Floyd killing I read many articles about racism on Politico and on the CNN site. Although CNN is pretty corporate, their coverage of BLM stuff in that first month was pretty good and Politico has never seemed centrist to me. But in the articles I was reading about BLM from these sources there was nothing about unions. And when I have read stuff about unions (from progressive or liberal or centrist sources) I don’t think I have ever read anything about rolling back racism among white workers.
Soon I’ll explain why I believe unions help challenge racist views among white people, but I need to first explain why I believe that most or almost all of the leadership of the American labor movement is anti-racist.
About 27 years ago the late John Sweeney was elected President of the AFL-CIO. He became a member of the Democratic Socialists of America around the same time and DSA is an incredibly anti-racist organization. He was elected on the same slate as Linda Chavez-Thompson who became Executive Vice President and held that position until 2007. He also hired Bill Fletcher Jr. as Assistant to the President. Fletcher Jr. was "national organizer" for the Black Radical Congress and part of the coordinating committee from 1998-2003. (The BRC was a coalition of Black people and organizations on the broad Left in America).
In a full statement below Fletcher Jr. says that unionization can spread anti-racist education and practices. I imagine that means that leaders at lower and/or higher levels push an anti-racist agenda. Fletcher Jr. and Fernando Gapasin wrote a 2008 book about the split in the labor movement that produced Change to Win. I am not incredibly well educated about the labor movement but one of the things I HAVE read is that book and although it says that there is room for improvement when it comes to racial justice and organized labor, it gave me the impression that most or almost all leaders of organized labor in the last 27 years are anti-racist.
Why do I believe that unions will help roll back racism among the white working-class? I have known for decades that exit polls during American elections indicate that voters from union households are more likely to vote Democratic than other voters are. This is anecdotal, but in 2000, on the discussion list of the Young Democratic Socialists (now YDSA) a member who was organizing workers in Indiana said that his competition (for the hearts and minds of the workers) was the Ku Klux Klan.
Bill Fletcher Jr. sent me the following statement: “unionization has proven, time and again, to be a critical instrument in promoting democracy. Unionized workers tend to vote in a more progressive direction, though not uniformly. And unions offer a unique opportunity to bring workers together across race, ethnic, religious and gender lines, to seek a common resolution to the challenges of economic injustice. Through unionization anti-racist education and practices can be introduced to the broader workforce, often leading to the isolation of racists and rightwing populists.”
In a column included in a 1998 collection of his work in previous decades, Northern Ireland journalist Eamonn McCann wrote that the labor movement had the most potential to eradicate religious bigotry in N. Ireland. He wrote: “No other institution brings Catholic and Protestant workers together on a regular basis in pursuit of a common purpose which is antipathetic to sectarianism.” McCann’s columns have been published by an average of 1-2 publications (magazines or newspapers staffed by professionals, including the Irish Times (Ireland’s biggest newspaper)) at any given time in the last 40 years and he has held senior positions in Ireland’s labor movement for 2-4 decades and he was one of the main leaders of the N. Ireland civil rights movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 2016 he was elected to the N. Ireland Assembly and in 2017 he would have been re-elected but they had reduced the number of Assembly members elected from each constituency from 6 to 5 and he was runner-up. He is an expert on fighting sectarianism in N. Ireland and believes that organized labor has a crucial role to play. Mark Langhammer, who was head of the N. Ireland part of the Irish Labour Party for several years around 2010 told me in 2005 that he agrees with McCann’s comment on the subject.
Many people believe that there are great similarities between the conflict in N. Ireland during The Troubles and the conflict over racism in this country. This includes people like Angela Y. Davis and in 1972 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. For more about this, see posts on my blog here and here, And/or read the 1998 Brian Dooley book “Black and Green.”
Although I am not a psychologist or sociologist I believe that both academic fields are relevant to this. On a similar issue (the effect that anti-racist actions by American supporters of Sinn Fein can have on the racial attitudes of many Irish-American supporters of SF) I sought the opinion of a woman with a BA in both psychology and sociology from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Masters in Social Work from the University of Denver and she agreed with me that if SF and it’s anti-racist American supporters would do more anti-racist stuff in America, many racist Irish-American supporters of SF would start questioning racism. I asked another psychologist with some background in sociology the same question and she agreed with me as well. That makes me confident that I am right about this theory I have about unions and racism.
I believe unions in America play a role in combatting racism and that that can be escalated when they return to the level of strength they were at before their decline began decades ago. If racist working-class whites see multi-cultural anti-racist unions negotiating collective bargaining agreements that they benefit from, many of them will start to question racism.
I think that if organized labor and it’s supporters talked about this that would help win over fiscally moderate and conservative Democrats.
Unfortunately many such Democrats have declined to vote in favor of strengthening labor unions. I’m sure these same Democrats are alarmed at the rise of Donald Trump and at the existence of the Proud Boys. What’s more important to them- protecting capitalism, or fighting racism?
(Another version of this was published in the Boulder Weekly, a widely read alternative paper for all of Boulder County, here).
(I am much more of a Sinn Fein supporter than a supporter of Eamonn McCann, but McCann wrote that quote about trade-unions in N. Ireland)
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