When it comes time to write, try to think, at minimum, of summarizing in a sentence or two the core argument of each essay, and then try to develop a proposition (or thesis, if you prefer) that respon

Labour’s Colour Lines: Citizenship, Race and Labour in Industrializing CanadaSaje Mathieu, “North of the Colour Line: Sleeping Car Porters and the Battle Against Jim Crowon Canadian Rails, 1880-1920,” in Bryan Palmer and Joan Sangster, eds. LabouringCanada: Class, Race, and Gender (Toronto: OUP, 2008): 176-191.David Goutor, “Constructing the ‘Great Menace’: Canadian Labour’s Opposition to AsianImmigration, 1880–1914.” Canadian Historical Review 88, no. 4 (2007): 549-576.In contemporary Canada, we are conditioned to see unions as leaders in advancing human rightsand safeguarding the rights of immigrants and minorities. Canada’s unions have, especially sincethe Second World War, played leadings roles in fighting racism and in the workplace andbeyond. It may be surprising to some of you to see turn-of-the-century unions advocating forsegregation and white supremacy and promoting what were called “White Canada” policies.These essays invite us to consider how racism works. Mathieu and Goutor, as anti-racist activistsand scholars, take the position that to fight racism, we must understand it. They observe thatracism, while always evil, is often rational–something that can be deployed by those who don’thave much social power to make claims on society and advance their interests. One of the ways in which you might like to think about these pieces is that one turns on the ideaof discourse and the other experience. In the Goutor piece, Asian workers exist not so much asreal people, but as imaginary constructs. As Goutor observes, many of those who opposedChinese immigration had never actually encountered a Chinese worker, so it was the idea ofChinese workers and what they symbolized, not actual people, that frightened them.The Mathieu piece, by contrast, is about experience. She writes about the response of Canadianunionists to the presence of actual black workers, and she is concerned with the agency of blackworkers as they tried to claim a place for themselves as citizens, unionists, and workers.I suggest you read Goutor first to get the big picture. He establishes the general case for whyCanadian unions embraced the politics of racial exclusion, whereas Mathieu’s piece is a narrowercase study of the experience of workers in a single industry. And while Goutor observes thatCanadian union discourse sometimes celebrated blacks as ideal citizens and drew connectionsbetween chattel slavery and “wage slavery,” Mathieu shows how hollow this rhetoric was whenwhite workers faced competition from actual black workers.On Goutor:Goutor opens his essay by exploring conventional explanations for the Canadian labourmovement’s antipathy towards Asian workers. Why, according to Goutor, are these explanationsinadequate? Why were Asian workers constituted as a threat even in regions where there was nosignificant Asian workforce? And why were Asian workers set apart from other groups–blacksand indigenous workers in particular–who were more likely to be understood as victims ofindustrial capitalism rather than symptoms of it?Pay particular attention to the last third of the article, in which Goutor discusses the symbolicrole that Asian workers assumed in debates about labour and citizenship rights. How werestereotypes of Asian workers used to frame discussions about the nature of capitalism? Whatassociations did nineteenth century labour rhetoric make between Asian workers and an emerging capitalist order? How did references to Asians, Chinese in particular, function as akind of shorthand for the moral bankruptcy of capitalism? How were stereotypes of Asianworkers used to define the ideals of white manhood and citizenship? How did this discoursehelp to define a working class movement, and what limits did it place on worker solidarity?On Mathieu:Mathieu’s essay really runs on two rails. The first is her concern to explain how and whyCanadian railway employers and white unions came to agree on the enforcement of a “colourline” that entrenched “separate and unequal” terms of employment for white and black workersand effectively locked black workers out of senior positions and denied them the protections of aunion. Her second concern is to show how racism shaped the lived experience of black workersworking for the Canadian railways. The first sections of the essay are concerned principally with the actions of railway employers,white workers, and the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Employees (CBRE). How were blackworkers “weaponized” against white workers and their unions? Why were black workersconstituted as a threat to white manhood and citizenship? Why, after the formation of the CBRE,did the railways begin to favour the employment of West Indians and African Americans overAfrican Canadians? Most importantly, why did Jim Crow policies and the strict enforcement ofa colour line constitute a “rational model for labour relations” for both employers and whiteunionists in the early twentieth century railways?In the last third of her essay, Mathieu turns her attention away from white workers and employersand focuses on black workers. How does she deploy the idea of agency? What concrete stepsdid black workers take to protect and defend their interests? How did they fight simultaneouslyagainst discrimination in the workforce and in the union movement? How did they deploy thelanguage of citizenship and working class solidarity to press their claims? And how did theirefforts reveal the basic hypocrisy of white unionists claims about workers’ solidarity?From Reading to WritingRemember, these questions are intended to frame your reading, not to act as guideposts to yourreview essay. In page space that you have available to you, there is no way that you can evenbegin to address more than one or two questions or argue more than one or two points.What I will be looking for is evidence that you have tried to come to terms with the arguments ofeach of the authors and that you have made some connections between the two articles. I’m lessinterested in a narrative summary (Mathieu discusses...) than in an analytical one (Goutorargues...). When it comes time to write, try to think, at minimum, of summarizing in a sentence or two thecore argument of each essay, and then try to develop a proposition (or thesis, if you prefer) thatresponds to the question, “What can we learn by reading these two essays together?”