Lexington Books
Pages: 234
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-4985-1434-7 • Hardback • March 2016 • $115.00 • (£88.00)
978-1-4985-1436-1 • Paperback • May 2019 • $50.99 • (£39.00)
978-1-4985-1435-4 • eBook • March 2016 • $48.00 • (£37.00)
Jake Alimahomed-Wilson is associate professor of sociology at California State University, Long Beach.
Chapter 1: Solidarity Forever?
Chapter 2: The Story of a Union
Chapter 3: Racial Formation of the Ports of Southern California
Chapter 4: Suing the Union
Chapter 5: Is Discrimination a Weapon of the Boss…or the Union Local?
Chapter 6: “Union Men” and the Crisis of Masculinity on the Docks
Chapter 7: Breaking the “Steel Ceiling”: Working Class Women Resisting Sexism and Racism in the Union (co-authored by Sabrina Alimahomed-Wilson)
Chapter 8: Redefining Solidarity
Appendix I: Race and Gender Breakdown: Southern California ILWU (2005)
Appendix II: Oral Histories
Individual chapters draw extensively from oral histories and provide useful background biographical profiles for the longshore workers. . . .The individual stories and recollections are important.
— The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du nord
Solidarity Foreveris a timely, important, and original contribution to the fields of labor and labor movements, race, gender and class intersectionality, immigration, and globalization. It is engagingly written, rigorously researched, and theoretically sophisticated and would be a useful text for a range of undergraduate and graduate courses as well as a valuable resource to union organizers, policy makers, and workers.
— American Journal of Sociology
In examining racism and sexism within the labor movement, instead of selecting the obvious suspects, such as the construction trades, Jake Alimahomed-Wilson has brilliantly chosen to look at a union that is generally viewed as one of the most progressive in the country. Combining historical testimony that was collected years ago with contemporary interviews, he tells the story from the point of view of the people who have suffered from this form of discrimination, letting them speak—as they do, vividly—for themselves. The author points out that grappling with racism and sexism in the union requires more than a “color-blind” approach, where each individual is treated as if their race and gender is irrelevant. This issue makes the book of great contemporary relevance, as students on today’s university campuses are grappling for stronger answers to their experiences of exclusion and marginalization.
— Edna Bonacich, University of California, Riverside
Combining archival data, interviews and oral histories, and ethnographic observations, Solidarity Forever? provides a definitive study of how racism and sexism has been both reproduced and challenged within the International Longshore Workers Union in Southern California. It provides important lessons for the U.S. labor movement and is a ‘must read’ for scholars of labor, race, and gender.
— Ellen Reese, University of California, Riverside