The Life of White Ethnics

Toward More Effective Working-Class Strategies

Categorical thought is rarely avoided even among those who know better. Thus, social analysis has characteristically been concerned with “the Negro,” then “the poor,” now “the working class,” all collective nouns followed by singular verbs and adjectives. Each time it seems the same: an initial period of gross generalization is followed, sometimes painfully, by the process of refinement.

The current concern with “America’s working class” seems to continue this tradition. The generalities of this huge group, not its particularities, are the concerns of those who “rediscover” it. Some differentiati...