David R. Roediger shows that in the United States, a nation pledged to independence but unable to avoid the harsh realities of wage labor, the concept of "whiteness" allowed Northern workers to identify with their bosses. In response, "white" workers consumed blackface popular culture, reshaped the languages of class, and embraced racist practices on and off the job. Far from simply preserving an economic advantage, white working-class racism derived its terrible force from a complex series of psychological and ideological mechanisms that reinforced stereotypes and helped to forge the very identities of white workers in opposition to Black ones. Full of insight regarding the precarious position of not-quite-white Irish immigrants to the United States and the fate of working-class abolitionism, The Wages of Whiteness contributes mightily and soberly to debates about the 1619 Project and critical race theory. Book jacket.