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The 2024 presidential election cycle has begun, and the white working class once more has commanded the spotlight. Pollsters obsess over how their economic struggles and resentments influence their political choices. Democrats and Republicans jockey to win their favor, each promising— through different cultural and political appeals—to address their individual and collective needs while igniting a new era of economic prosperity.
But where in this landscape are the direct appeals to the Black working class? This is a group that has experienced political and economic turmoil like few others, while simultaneously expanding the possibilities of the American political system. As Blair Kelley, an acclaimed, award-winning historian of Black history at UNC-Chapel Hill, writes in her new book, Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class, “When Black workers are mentioned, the idea of work is often dropped, instead it becomes a discussion about the poor.” But, in fact, Black workers are the backbone of the labor force. Or as Kelley puts it, “More than 28 percent of 42 million Black people in America today—the majority of the Black working class—are essential workers.”
In Kelley’s hands, modern labor struggles—from UPS workers fighting for a fair contract to Amazon workers demanding better working conditions—become historical epics made possible by the contributions of Black workers centuries ago. We can see the roots of solidarity between poor white workers and rich white capitalists, and how Black workers became a critical force for civil rights. We meet Black laundresses who brought cities to a grinding halt during Reconstruction by organizing powerful unions within a year of leaving slavery.
In their struggles and the fabric of their lives, Kelley discovers patterns that help to explain the current political landscape. The trajectory of this history led to the 2020 election when the support of Black working-class voters catapulted candidate Joe Biden to the Democratic nomination and then the presidency. You can see how that electoral bloc made the impossible possible by flipping Georgia despite a global pandemic and widespread voter suppression. As we approach the 2024 presidential race, Black Folk feels especially timely in its compelling argument about the important role Black workers play in shoring up American democracy. I caught up with Blair Kelly over Zoom from her office in Chapel Hill.
There’s been seemingly endless political and media attention on the white working class, but so little focus on the Black working class. Who is the Black working class? What made you decide to write a book about them?
At first, I thought this wasn’t the book for me. I’m not a labor historian or someone who has been studying unions exclusively for a long time. When my editor asked what a book from my perspective as a scholar of Black history would look like, I realized my family was at the heart of how I could approach the question. My family members weren’t necessarily famous labor organizers or people who led wildcat strikes. They worked jobs. They had relationships within the communities that supported them. I wanted to start with them and the humanity behind those who work.
I define the term “Black working class” broadly. It’s probably broader than most scholars might frame it because the book begins with enslavement, and a good Marxist would never start with enslavement. You would begin when people are free. But for me, the roots of Black working people start in our history of being in bondage in this country, our relationships to those institutions, and the ways in which we built community, resistance, and life in spite of enslavement.
You describe Black churches during enslavement as a “launching pad for working-class organization.” Do you see that spirit in modern Black churches today, or has that legacy shifted?
Our churches are so different from where our forebearers’ were. For one thing, there were no megachurches coming out of enslavement. In the traditional church spaces that still exist, I do see some things that strengthen the working-class community. Encouraging young people to build their voices, for example. Churches are often the first place where young people speak, sing, or play an instrument. There’s encouragement for people to serve and lead. And to complicate ideas of who should be in leadership, it doesn’t matter if you’re a PhD or a postal worker. In traditional church spaces, those outside assumptions can melt away.
But the number of churches like that is decreasing over time because of the pull towards prosperity gospel— that preaches if God is blessing you, you’re wealthy, financially free, and successful. And that’s not where we come from as a people. The roots of Black Christianity are about believing that you are God’s chosen, in spite of the fact that you don’t have the worldly things people use to measure success. It was about the justice that you knew would come, if not in this life then the next.
To me, the prosperity gospel is anathema to thinking about holding up and supporting a Black working class. We face structural challenges that provide us with a world where most Black people are not going to be wealthy, and that shouldn’t make people think, well God doesn’t love me.
Do you believe Black churches are still radical spaces?
They can be. I belong to a traditional Black church. I’m in leadership and my husband is too. And I believe in Black institutions. I mean look at where I am. I’m a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. This is an embattled space; it’s one of the roots of the affirmative action case. I’m here because it’s a state institution that admits Black students, working-class people, and students from rural communities who want the best education they can get in their home state. And I believe in that project.
I’ve been in all kinds of institutions that are problematic—Duke, UVA, NC State—and yet, I believed in the possibility of those institutions. So why in the hell would I not believe in the possibility of Black institutions? Why would I say Black institutions have flawed histories and should be disposed of? And then be in white institutions, that have flawed histories about my own people, and then say we can work it out! I believe we should inhabit Black spaces even when they are deeply imperfect.
Can the roots of the white working class be found in slavery as well?
Absolutely. The greatest trick ever played on the white working class was to get them to invest in a system that kept them poorer than they should have been. Slavery is a disinvestment in free-working people. If you’re just a regular white person with no land or enslaved people, this wasn’t a system you were able to double dutch your way into. Your wages would be suppressed by the existence of enslaved people. So, wealthy white people got poor white people to buy into some notion of race that would make them feel equal in status and as if everything was fine. I think that trick is still being played.
White working-class people need many of the same things as Black, Brown, and Asian working-class people do: health care, good schools, livable wages, higher education for their children. And yet people are still so invested in suppressing or being afraid of someone else that they aren’t really considering their own positionality.
Biden couldn’t have won without the Black working class. How has writing this book shaped your understanding of that group’s political priorities?
Recognition is key. What happened in Georgia is a great example of that. Stacey Abrams and a whole panoply of Black organizations went to places that traditional candidates rarely go to and made it clear that they wanted to hear from those communities. That was so powerful it changed the electoral map and what was possible in a state like Georgia.
The recognition of their existence and prioritizing the questions that they want to ask is important. If you go to different parts of the country, you’re going to get different answers. In some places, it’s environmental justice. Rural, working-class Black people live in some of the most toxic places in the world. If you’re in urban spaces, the decay and abandonment of cities are likely important. People want investment in their communities, safe places for their kids. They want education and a decent wage. They’re ready for the possibility of change, but it starts with the recognition of the particularities of their vulnerabilities.
This seems like a very pragmatic group of voters. Where do you think that pragmatism comes from?
There’s less focus on the particularities of the person representing you compared to what they actually get done. You can see that from a whole series of Black mayors who didn’t have the chops to get things done and were more invested in their own stuff. If there’s someone who knows how to get things done and can listen and understand how things work in their local communities, that’s what Black working-class voters care the most about. That’s what Biden represents. He was the most pragmatic-looking person in the previous election.
Your book reveals labor struggles that have rarely seen the light of day. I was so captivated by the post-Civil War strike waves set off by Black laundresses. Can you talk about Black domestic workers as a political force?
Tara Hunter’s book To ‘Joy My Freedom is an incredible account of the Atlanta Washerwomen’s Strike of 1881 when 3,000 of the city’s laundresses organized a union to demand better pay and labor conditions during the Atlanta Exposition. But that strike happened on a smaller scale everywhere.
Black washerwomen set the terms of their employment from the very first moment of emancipation. They refused to wash clothes on holidays. People wanted them to wash multiple loads in a week, to set the timelines for their work, and they said no. In 1865, Black washerwomen organized a union in Jackson, Mississippi. Who comes out of enslavement and organizes a union immediately? That tells you everything you need to know about who enslaved people were. It’s a reminder that workers don’t need someone to raise their consciousness. They don’t need someone to come teach them about what’s oppressive about what they do or the power they wield when they come together. They might need the resources of a union, but they damn sure don’t need directions.
What are some other major pivotal moments within Black working-class history?
I loved having the chance to write about the Pullman Porters and Black postal workers. They are that bridge between just working a job and making it a transformational collective enterprise. The Pullman Porters, like the washerwomen, could take advantage of the monopoly that they had on employment. George Mortimer Pullman wanted Black men to work on his sleeping cars. He pictured a sort of antebellum romantic version of travel would of course have a Black man servant waiting on you hand and foot. And those men became cosmopolitan leaders within the Black community, known for their mobility and knowledge. And when they formed a union, they used that platform to amplify demands from other workers.
The Pullman Porters powered the March on Washington movement, which started in the 1930s, and ultimately led to the 1963 March on Washington. Postal workers are the same. The first Black men who do postal service work are venerated Civil War veterans, and they had to fight hard against the myth of the Black male rapist just to deliver some mail and have a decent job. And many of them died. They were murdered by mobs in their effort to do postal work. That’s something we don’t think about. But their labor sets the groundwork for a civil rights generation that fights for access to federal jobs, which was a powerful counter to state-by-state segregation.
Do you think the demise of race-conscious admissions will affect the Black working class?
I have thought that affirmative action was going away my whole adult life—the argument against it has been so profound and hostile, and the ground on which most people discuss it is so a-historical. People talk about affirmative action like it’s just about diversity and wanting to see different-looking people in a room when it’s about historic exclusion. We’re in the middle of a complicated reparations discussion around the country. Affirmative action could have been thought of in those terms—but it’s gone.
The pathways that make it difficult to attend elite institutions are fraught and difficult for working-class communities because of the structural forces that make education unequal in this country. The things that tie the quality of education to housing and zip code. Those are fundamental injustices that, as a country, we are not interested in addressing. So, the narrow pipeline that pulls people out of under-resourced communities and into elite institutions just got narrower.
But as I said earlier, I believe in Black institutions. I am thankful that HBCUs still exist. I am hopeful that Black communities will begin to further invest in the experiences of HBCU students. I don’t think that there’s a legal means by which we can really contest this change, but I think enriching what the broader set of possibilities are for Black students should be the work.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
FREDERICTON – New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs has called an election for Oct. 21, signalling the beginning of a 33-day campaign expected to focus on pocketbook issues and the government’s provocative approach to gender identity policies.
The 70-year-old Progressive Conservative leader, who is seeking a third term in office, has attracted national attention by requiring teachers to get parental consent before they can use the preferred names and pronouns of young students.
More recently, however, the former Irving Oil executive has tried to win over inflation-weary voters by promising to lower the provincial harmonized sales tax by two percentage points to 13 per cent if re-elected.
At dissolution, the Conservatives held 25 seats in the 49-seat legislature. The Liberals held 16 seats, the Greens had three and there was one Independent and four vacancies.
J.P. Lewis, a political science professor at the University of New Brunswick, said the top three issues facing New Brunswickers are affordability, health care and education.
“Across many jurisdictions, affordability is the top concern — cost of living, housing prices, things like that,” he said.
Richard Saillant, an economist and former vice-president of Université de Moncton, said the Tories’ pledge to lower the HST represents a costly promise.
“I don’t think there’s that much room for that,” he said. “I’m not entirely clear that they can do so without producing a greater deficit.” Saillant also pointed to mounting pressures to invest more in health care, education and housing, all of which are facing increasing demands from a growing population.
Higgs’s main rivals are Liberal Leader Susan Holt and Green Party Leader David Coon. Both are focusing on economic and social issues.
Holt has promised to impose a rent cap and roll out a subsidized school food program. The Liberals also want to open at least 30 community health clinics over the next four years.
Coon has said a Green government would create an “electricity support program,” which would give families earning less than $70,000 annually about $25 per month to offset “unprecedented” rate increases.
Higgs first came to power in 2018, when the Tories formed the province’s first minority government in 100 years. In 2020, he called a snap election — the first province to go to the polls after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and won a majority.
Since then, several well-known cabinet ministers and caucus members have stepped down after clashing with Higgs, some of them citing what they described as an authoritarian leadership style and a focus on policies that represent a hard shift to the right side of the political spectrum.
Lewis said the Progressive Conservatives are in the “midst of reinvention.”
“It appears he’s shaping the party now, really in the mould of his world views,” Lewis said. “Even though (Progressive Conservatives) have been down in the polls, I still think that they’re very competitive.”
Meanwhile, the legislature remained divided along linguistic lines. The Tories dominate in English-speaking ridings in central and southern parts of the province, while the Liberals held most French-speaking ridings in the north.
The drama within the party began in October 2022 when the province’s outspoken education minister, Dominic Cardy, resigned from cabinet, saying he could no longer tolerate the premier’s leadership style. In his resignation letter, Cardy cited controversial plans to reform French-language education. The government eventually stepped back those plans.
A series of resignations followed last year when the Higgs government announced changes to Policy 713, which now requires students under 16 who are exploring their gender identity to get their parents’ consent before teachers can use their preferred first names or pronouns — a reversal of the previous practice.
When several Tory lawmakers voted with the opposition to call for an external review of the change, Higgs dropped dissenters from his cabinet. And a bid by some party members to trigger a leadership review went nowhere.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
FREDERICTON – A 33-day provincial election campaign is expected to officially get started today in New Brunswick.
Progressive Conservative Premier Blaine Higgs has said he plans to visit Lt.-Gov. Brenda Murphy this morning to have the legislature dissolved.
Higgs, a 70-year-old former oil executive, is seeking a third term in office, having led the province since 2018.
The campaign ahead of the Oct. 21 vote is expected to focus on pocketbook issues, but the government’s provocative approach to gender identity issues could also be in the spotlight.
The Tory premier has already announced he will try to win over inflation-weary voters by promising to lower the harmonized sales tax by two percentage points to 13 per cent if re-elected.
Higgs’s main rivals are Liberal Leader Susan Holt and Green Party Leader David Coon, both of whom are focusing on economic and social issues.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
VICTORIA – If the lead up to British Columbia‘s provincial election campaign is any indication of what’s to come, voters should expect the unexpected.
It could be a wild ride to voting day on Oct. 19.
The Conservative Party of B.C. that didn’t elect a single member in the last election and gained less than two per cent of the popular vote is now leading the charge for centre-right, anti-NDP voters.
The official Opposition BC United, who as the former B.C. Liberals won four consecutive majorities from 2001 to 2013, raised a white flag and suspended its campaign last month, asking its members, incumbents and voters to support the B.C. Conservatives to prevent a vote split on the political right.
New Democrat Leader David Eby delivered a few political surprises of his own in the days leading up to Saturday’s official campaign start, signalling major shifts on the carbon tax and the issue of involuntary care in an attempt to curb the deadly opioid overdose crisis.
He said the NDP would drop the province’s long-standing carbon tax for consumers if the federal government eliminates its requirement to keep the levy in place, and pledged to introduce involuntary care of people battling mental health and addiction issues.
The B.C. Coroners Service reports more than 15,000 overdose deaths since the province declared an opioid overdose public health emergency in 2016.
Drug policy in B.C., especially decriminalization of possession of small amounts of hard drugs and drug use in public areas, could become key election issues this fall.
Eby, a former executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said Wednesday that criticism of the NDP’s involuntary care plan by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association is “misinformed” and “misleading.”
“This isn’t about forcing people into a particular treatment,” he said at an unrelated news conference. “This is about making sure that their safety, as well as the safety of the broader community, is looked after.”
Eby said “simplistic arguments,” where one side says lock people up and the other says don’t lock anybody up don’t make sense.
“There are some people who should be in jail, who belong in jail to ensure community safety,” said Eby. “There are some people who need to be in intensive, secure mental health treatment facilities because that’s what they need in order to be safe, in order not to be exploited, in order not to be dead.”
The CCLA said in a statement Eby’s plan is not acceptable.
“There is no doubt that substance use is an alarming and pressing epidemic,” said Anais Bussières McNicoll, the association’s fundamental freedoms program director. “This scourge is causing significant suffering, particularly, among vulnerable and marginalized groups. That being said, detaining people without even assessing their capacity to make treatment decisions, and forcing them to undergo treatment against their will, is unconstitutional.”
While Eby, a noted human rights lawyer, could face political pressure from civil rights opponents to his involuntary care plans, his opponents on the right also face difficulties.
The BC United Party suspended its campaign last month in a pre-election move to prevent a vote split on the right, but that support may splinter as former jilted United members run as Independents.
Five incumbent BC United MLAs, Mike Bernier, Dan Davies, Tom Shypitka, Karin Kirkpatrick and Coralee Oakes are running as Independents and could become power brokers in the event of a minority government situation, while former BC United incumbents Ian Paton, Peter Milobar and Trevor Halford are running under the B.C. Conservative banner.
Davies, who represents the Fort St. John area riding of Peace River North, said he’s always been a Conservative-leaning politician but he has deep community roots and was urged by his supporters to run as an Independent after the Conservatives nominated their own candidate.
Davies said he may be open to talking with B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad after the election, if he wins or loses.
Green Leader Sonia Furstenau has suggested her party is an option for alienated BC United voters.
Rustad — who faced criticism from BC United Leader Kevin Falcon and Eby about the far-right and extremist views of some of his current and former candidates and advisers — said the party’s rise over the past months has been meteoric.
“It’s been almost 100 years since the Conservative Party in B.C. has won a government,” he said. “The last time was 1927. I look at this now and I think I have never seen this happen anywhere in the country before. This has been happening in just over a year. It just speaks volumes that people are just that eager and interested in change.”
Rustad, ejected from the former B.C. Liberals in August 2022 for publicly supporting a climate change skeptic, sat briefly as an Independent before being acclaimed the B.C. Conservative leader in March 2023.
Rustad, who said if elected he will fire B.C.’s provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry over her vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic, has removed the nominations of some of his candidates who were vaccine opponents.
“I am not interested in going after votes and trying to do things that I think might be popular,” he said.
Prof. David Black, a political communications specialist at Greater Victoria’s Royal Roads University, said the rise of Rustad’s Conservatives and the collapse of BC United is the political story of the year in B.C.
But it’s still too early to gauge the strength of the Conservative wave, he said.
“Many questions remain,” said Black. “Has the free enterprise coalition shifted sufficiently far enough to the right to find the social conservatism and culture-war populism of some parts of the B.C. Conservative platform agreeable? Is a party that had no infrastructure and minimal presence in what are now 93 ridings this election able to scale up and run a professional campaign across the province?”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
