The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration

Michèle Lamont takes us into the world inhabited by working-class men--the world as they understand it. Interviewing black and white working-class men who, because they are not college graduates, have limited access to high-paying jobs and other social benefits, she constructs a revealing portrait of how they see themselves and the rest of society.

Morality is at the center of these workers' worlds. They find their identity and self-worth in their ability to discipline themselves and conduct responsible but caring lives. These moral standards function as an alternative to economic definitions of success, offering them a way to maintain dignity in an out-of-reach American dreamland. But these standards also enable them to draw class boundaries toward the poor and, to a lesser extent, the upper half. Workers also draw rigid racial boundaries, with white workers placing emphasis on the "disciplined self" and blacks on the "caring self." Whites thereby often construe blacks as morally inferior because they are lazy, while blacks depict whites as domineering, uncaring, and overly disciplined.

This book also opens up a wider perspective by examining American workers in comparison with French workers, who take the poor as "part of us" and are far less critical of blacks than they are of upper-middle-class people and immigrants. By singling out different "moral offenders" in the two societies, workers reveal contrasting definitions of "cultural membership" that help us understand and challenge the forms of inequality found in both societies.

This study examines the way that working-class men both define themselves and the rest of society. The book analyzes the importance placed on moral standards and the rigid racial and class boundaries drawn by the men in their construction of their own definition of success.

Michèle Lamont is Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and Professor of Sociology and African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

Introduction: Making Sense of Their Worlds

The Questions

The People

The Research

I. American Workers

1. The World in Moral Order

"Disciplined Selves": Survival, Work Ethic, and Responsibility

Providing for and Protecting the Family

Straightforwardness and Personal Integrity

Salvation from Pollution: Religion and Traditional Morality

Caring Selves: Black Conceptions of Solidarity and Altruism

The Policing of Moral Boundaries

2. Euphemized Racism: Moral qua Racial Boundaries

How Morality Defines Racism

Whites on Blacks

Blacks on Whites

Immigration

The Policing of Racial Boundaries

3. Assessing"People Above" and"People Below"

Morality and Class Relations

"People Above"

"People Below"

The Policing of Class Boundaries

II. The United States Compared

4. Workers Compared

Profile of French Workers

Profile of North African Immigrants

Working Class Morality

The Policing of Moral Boundaries Compared

5. Racism Compared

French Workers on Muslims

French Workers' Antiracism: Egalitarianism and Solidarity

North African Responses

The Policing of Racial Boundaries Compared

6. Class Boundaries Compared

Class Boundaries in a Dying Class Struggle

Workers on"People Above"

Solidarity