Originally published here.

Research portraying the lives of working-class (White) men has generally paid much more attention to class and gender than to race. By failing to problematize Whiteness, this literature obscures the racial privileges that working-class Whites can access even as they are marginalized along the lines of class. This study applies critical race theory to analyse the dynamic intersection between the racial and gender privilege available to working-class White men from their position of social and economic marginality. It empirically builds on the ethnographic study of a small North American company in the construction industry. This study makes three main contributions. First, it argues that even as the position of working-class White men in the cur-rent class order limits their life chances, they nevertheless access small but significant benefits based on race. Second, it contributes to current conversations on White privilege by showing how such privilege manifests itself differently depending on social class position. Third, it underscores the importance of intersectional analysis in understanding how different social identities interact to reproduce racism and capitalism.

The present study challenges colour-blind renderings of working-class men prevalent in the organization studies literature. Applying a critical race theory (CRT) framework, I explore the racial privilege available to working-class White men who nonetheless remain socially and economically marginalized. The study draws on extensive participant observation at ‘Midwest Installation’, a small US-based company employing 15–20 full-time White male employees in semi-skilled construction jobs on a continuous basis and an equivalent number of predominantly Black male contingent workers for short periods. Theoretically, the study draws from North American race scholars(Bell, 2018; Du Bois, 1935, 2010), who have long contended that status-enhancing deflections afford Whites the psychological benefit of having people to look down upon and lower-class Whites the space to imagine having common cause with White elites (with whom they share little other than racial status). In this effort, I engage with CRT and critical White studies (CWS) more specifically. These traditions take the continued pervasiveness of racism as a starting point of analysis, while remaining mindful of its complex interplay with other social constructs, including gender and class (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). This analytical framework prompts scholars interested in class to carefully attend to issues of race and to develop analyses mindful of the material and psychological ways that Whites benefit from racism (Du Bois, 1935; Harris, 1993).

The present study set out to critique class-blind formulations of White privilege, attempting to integrate race in discussions of contemporary working-class (White) men that have been dominated by colour-blind scholarship. By accounting for the types of marginalization that working-class White men face, this work pushes for moving away from homogeneous renderings of privilege towards more nuanced understandings that account for multiple aspects of identity. The findings also show that, in the case of working-class White men, the dynamic interaction between racial privilege and class marginalization contributes to the reproduction of the existing class order, thus demonstrating that the racial privileges White men enjoy contribute to their continued economic marginality.

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