Although racism on the part of the white majority is exaggerated, (in the words of Brendon Sexton, a contributor to The White Majority, "Big factories are probably the most integrated work-places in society"), it is still present. But it is present as a result of social-economic conditions. Scapegoating gives a perverted sense of status and meaning to the lives of many steel-workers. In addition, the often tenuous economic position of the white majority is thought to be threatened by black advances. It is easier to direct alienation against what seems to be a visible threat than to confront the more fundamental but also more remote and impersonal capitalist power structure.

The reasons given above illustrate why the increasing alienation of the white majority has not resulted in a cohesive attack on the social-economic system that causes that alienation. But the belief in many quarters that the white majority is totally reactionary and impotent is far off the mark.

Labor unions are the most powerful institutional force on the left in America today. Powerful labor support for civil rights legislation and the Haynsworth and Carswell defeats indicate an openness for reform action. Labor support for the Indochina war is more a function of loyalty to labor's dying sons than it is support for an imperialistic foreign policy. McGeorge Bundy and Lyndon Johnson started the war, not Walter Reuther or George Meany.

Members of the academic community and others on the left have a key responsibility in effecting a change of white majority consciousness. We must demonstrate that the existing social-economic system is the cause of working class alienation. The cure is not Nixon or Wallace but a socialistic participatory democracy. Organizational work must be done in blue-collar communities to achieve this goal.

Working class people must first be seen as individuals and not stereotyped as hopeless, ignorant racists. The greatest virtue of The White Majority is its portrayal of the actual life-style of the white working class--one very distant from Harvard's. In the words of Gene Cappelli, a 29-year-old hospital attendent who makes $101 a week to support a family of four, "If a lot of these higher-up people discussed some of this and tried to see it like the lower class people, it might help."

Capelli deserves an answer and a commitment, for if change comes to America, it will come not only for impoverished blacks and alienated students. It will also come for Polish steel-workers like Mike Dombrowski, people who face a shit-shoveling steel mill life, without hope for a tomorrow different from today. We can't just help the oppressed of our choosing.