Fear and Loathing?: Ethnic Hostility and Working-Class Consciousness

Within the Left, the most common explanation of American exceptionalism has been the ethnic diversity of the American working class: the differences among native-born, immigrant, and slave descendant; among Protestant, Catholic, and Jew; among Irish, Italian, German, and Slav—all these have stymied any movement toward class solidarity. In this view, the many pieces of the American working-class puzzle would not fit together. Working-class culture, even its language, was a melange of separate identities, each attached to a primordial national heritage rather than to a universalistic class consciousness. As a result, instead of fighting the common class enemy, workers too