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Questioning ‘supply and demand’: Unions, labor market processes, and interracial inequality1

In 1948, W. E. B. Dubois declared, ‘Probably the greatest and most effective effort toward interracial understanding among the working masses has come about through…the organization of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) in 1935.’ Yet the CIO's role in shaping race relations and patterns of interracial inequality has been largely overlooked by contemporary scholars of race. Drawing from an ongoing research program on the relative effects of the CIO versus the AFL (American Federation of Labor) on interracial inequality during the 1940s, we discuss implications for the role of unions today and into the future. Findings for the CIO era challenge widespread notions about the connection between the ‘demand for labor’ and interracial inequality. Comparing recent developments in the economy and labor movement with those of the CIO era, we argue that a new form of interracial working-class movement may be emerging, a movement that, if positively linked to continued struggles for racial justice and equality, could make a profound difference for race relations and ‘color lines’ in the twenty-first century.