Can Labor Move Past Race?
Until the past two weeks, it wasn’t evident that labor was up to that challenge. At the beginning of October, the AFL-CIO’s weekly polling of its Ohio members was showing a slim Obama lead over McCain of 53 percent to 41 percent. But Obama’s numbers have increased steadily during October while McCain’s have declined, so that today, Obama is getting 62 percent support from Ohio AFL-CIO members (including both traditional unions and Working America) and McCain just 31 percent. In September, Obama was trailing John Kerry’s numbers at that time four years previous. Now, he’s slightly surpassed them. In a sense, overcoming the nation’s racial rifts has always been the distinctive challenge facing American labor. Unlike its European counterparts, its own working class has always been multiracial — a fact that explains a great deal about the failure of the United States to ever have a powerful socialist movement or a more solidaristic consciousness. At their best, unions have been an indispe
Until the past two weeks, it wasn’t evident that labor was up to that challenge. At the beginning of October, the AFL-CIO’s weekly polling of its Ohio members was showing a slim Obama lead over McCain of 53 percent to 41 percent. But Obama’s numbers have increased steadily during October while McCain’s have declined, so that today, Obama is getting 62 percent support from Ohio AFL-CIO members (including both traditional unions and Working America) and McCain just 31 percent. In September, Obama was trailing John Kerry’s numbers at that time four years previous. Now, he’s slightly surpassed them. In a sense, overcoming the nation’s racial rifts has always been the distinctive challenge facing American labor. Unlike its European counterparts, its own working class has always been multiracial — a fact that explains a great deal about the failure of the United States to ever have a powerful socialist movement or a more solidaristic consciousness. At their best, unions have been an indispe
