Jeffrey B. Perry

Jeffrey B. Perry is an independent, working-class scholar formally educated at Princeton, Harvard, Rutgers, and Columbia.

His work focuses on the role of white supremacy as a retardant to progressive social change and on the centrality of struggle against white supremacy to progressive social change.

For forty years Jeff Perry has been active in the working class movement as a rank-and-file worker and as a union shop steward, officer, editor, and retiree. He has also been involved in domestic and international social justice issues including affirmative action, union democracy, and anti-apartheid, anti-war, and anti-imperialist work.

Perry was influenced toward serious study of matters of race and class in America through personal experiences and readings and through the work of an independent scholar and close personal friend, the late Theodore William Allen (1919-2005), author of The Invention of the White Race, (2 vols., Verso Books, 1994, 1997, new edition 2012) and "Summary of the Argument of The Invention of the White Race." Allen was an anti-white-supremacist, proletarian intellectual and an autodidact whose research and writings on the role of white supremacy in United States history and on the centrality of the struggle against white supremacy disposed Perry to be receptive to the life and work of Hubert H. Harrison (1883-1927), another independent, autodidactic, anti-white-supremacist, working class intellectual. Perry considers Harrison and Allen to be two of the twentieth century's most important writers on "race" and class in America.

Dr. Perry preserved and inventoried the "Hubert H. Harrison Papers" and helped to place them at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University and to develop the "Hubert H. Harrison Papers, 1893-1927: Finding Aid." He is the editor of A Hubert Harrison Reader (Wesleyan University Press, 2001) and the forthcoming "Writings of Hubert Harrison." He is also the author of Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 (Columbia University Press, 2008), the first volume of a two-volume biography, and of other writings on Harrison. He is currently working on Vol. 2 of the Hubert Harrison biography.

Perry is also the literary executor for, and chronicler of the life of, Theodore William Allen whose Papers he is preserving and inventorying. He edited and introduced Allen's Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race (1975; Center for the Study of Working Class Life, State University of New York, Stony Brook, 2006) and he has authored numerous other pieces on Allen including a lengthy treatment of "The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights From Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen on the Centrality of the Fight Against White Supremacy" in (Cultural Logic, July 2010 ). Most recently he contributed new introductions, back matter, internal study guides, and expanded indexes for the new (Verso Books, November 2012) expanded edition of Allen's two-volume The Invention of the White Race. (Vol 1: Racial Oppression and Social Control and Vol. 2: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America).

Writings by Dr. Perry have appeared in AfricanGlobe, AlterNet, CounterPunch, Facts For Working People, Truthout, Black Past.org, Black Agenda Report, Black Commentator, Z Net, Cultural Logic; Souls, Communist History, Local 2627 AFSCME, History News Network, Amsterdam News, Socialism and Democracy, Encyclopedia of African American History and Culture, Pambazuka News, Hartford Guardian, Claridad, Journal of American History, Journal of Pan-African Studies, New Labor Forum, Local 300 Mail Handlers News, The Mail Handler, Mail Handler Voice, Your Union News, Labor Notes, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, Encyclopedia of African American Literature, Lies of Our Times, and various encyclopedias, journals, newspapers, and labor publications.

In efforts at public outreach Dr. Perry has spoken on radio and TV and delivered presentations at hundreds of domestic and international venues including colleges, universities, unions, libraries, bookstores, museums, conferences, community and educational forums, and high schools.

Here are video samples of Dr. Perry's Slide Presentation talks on Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 and on Theodore W. Allen's The Invention of the White Race.

HUBERT HARRISON
Slide Presentation/​Talk


“Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism”
Presentation by Jeffrey B. Perry
Dudley Public Library, Roxbury, Massachusetts,
February 15, 2014
The event was hosted by Mimi Jones and sponsored by Friends of the Dudley Library, Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia, and Massachusetts Global Action. Contact people included Mirna Lascano, Umang Kumar, and Charlie Welch in addition to Mimi Jones.

Video Prepared by Boston Neighborhood News TV’s “Around Town” -- Channel: Comcast 9 /​ RCN 15 Justin D. Shannahan, Production Manager, Ted Lewis, cameraman, and Laura Kerivan, copy editor for Boston Neighborhood Network Television. Nia Grace, Marketing and Promotions Manager of BNNTV, and Scott Mercer, of BNNTV, coordinated efforts to make the video available.

Jeffrey B. Perry Discusses Theodore W. Allen on “The Invention of the White Race,”

Labor History, and the Centrality of Labor Struggle Against White Supremacy
Interview conducted with Caesar Pink and staff of Arete Living Arts Center (Brooklyn, NY) on Saturday, June 8, 2013, at the Labor and Working Class History Association (LAWCHA) National Conference, at Brooklyn - CUNY Center for Worker Education, 25 Broadway, 7th floor, New York, NY, 10004.
Posted on 7 April 2014.
For additional information on Jeffrey B. Perry CLICK HERE!
For key insights from Theodore W. Allen on U.S. Labor History CLICK HERE!
For information on Theodore W. Allen’s “The Invention of the White Race” CLICK HERE!
For additional writings by and about Theodore W. Allen CLICK HERE!
For writings by and about Hubert Harrison CLICK HERE!
For information on Arete Living Arts Foundation CLICK HERE!

Table of Contents
for
The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights From
Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen
On the Centrality of the Fight Against White Supremacy

By Jeffrey B. Perry
(see top left of this page for link to the article)


Epigraph
Introduction
    Hubert Harrison
    Theodore W. Allen
    Harrison and Allen and the Centrality of the Struggle Against White-Supremacy
Some Class and Racial Aspects of The Conjuncture
    Deepening Economic Crisis
    U.S. Workers Faring Badly
    White Supremacist Shaping
    Wisconsin
    Millions are Suffering and Conditions are Worsening
Insights from Hubert Harrison
    Arrival in America, Contrast with St. Croix
    Socialist Party Writings
    “Southernism or Socialism – which?”
    The Socialist Party Puts [the “White”] Race First and Class After
   Class Consciousness, White Supremacy, and the "Duty to Champion the Cause of the Negro"
    On “The Touchstone” and the Two-Fold Character of Democracy in America
    Concentrated Race-Conscious Work in the Black Community
    Capitalist Imperialism and the Need to Break Down Exclusion Walls of White Workers
    The International Colored Unity League
    Struggle Against White Supremacy is Central
Insights from Theodore W. Allen
   Early Research and Writings and Pioneering Use of “White Skin Privilege” Concept
   White Blindspot
   Why No Socialism? . . . and The Main Retardant to Working    Class Consciousness
   The Role of White Supremacy in Three Previous Crises
   The Great Depression . . . and the White Supremacist Response
   Response to Four Arguments Against and Five “Artful Dodges”
   Early 1970s Writings and Strategy
   “The Invention of the White Race”
   Other Important Contributions in Writings on the Colonial Period
   Inventing the “White Race” and Fixing “a perpetual Brand upon Free Negros”
   Political Economic Aspects of the Invention of the “White Race”
   Racial Oppression and National Oppression
   “Racial Slavery” and “Slavery”
   Male Supremacy, Gender Oppression, and Laws Affecting the Family
   Slavery as Capitalism, Slaveholders as Capitalists, Enslaved as Proletarians
   Class-Conscious, Anti-White Supremacist Counter Narrative –    Comments on Jordan and Morgan
   Not Simply a Social Construct, But a Ruling Class Social    Control Formation . . . and Comments on Roediger
   The “White Race” and “White Race” Privilege
   On the Bifurcation of “Labor History” and “Black History” and on the “National Question”
   Later Writings . . . “Toward a Revolution in Labor History”
Strategy
The Struggle Ahead