Epigraph (Part 4 of 4) -- from "The Developing Conjuncture . . ."
"(In) three periods of national crisis [Civil War and Reconstruction, Populist Revolt of 1890s, and the Great Depression of the 1930s] characterized by general confrontations between capital and urban and rural laboring classes . . . The key to the defeat of the forces of democracy, labor and socialism was in each case achieved by ruling-class appeals to white supremacism, basically by fostering white-skin privileges of laboring- class European-Americans."
--Theodore W. Allen "Introduction" to "The Kernel and the Meaning: A Contribution to a Proletarian Critique of United States History," 2003
"[This 'white race'] . . . this all-class association of European-Americans held together by 'racial' privileges conferred on laboring class European-Americans relative to African- Americans - [has functioned] as the principal historic guarantor of ruling-class domination of national life"
-- Theodore W. Allen, "Summary of the Argument of The Invention of the White Race," 1998
"The 'white race' is the historically most general form of 'class collaboration.'"
- Theodore W. Allen, Taped Interview with Chad Pearson, SUNY-Albany, May 13, 2004
" . . . the 'white race' must be understood, not simply as a social construct, but as a ruling class social control formation."
- Theodore W. Allen, "Summary of the Argument of The Invention of the White Race," 1998