American Made, Hollywood Spin: A Wider Angle on the American Working Class | Aimee Loiselle | Beyond Norma Rae

WEBVTT
00:00:02.080 --> 00:00:10.800
Hello and welcome to the Clio Dialogues, the podcast that links history with the present to help us better understand the world we live in today.
00:00:10.800 --> 00:00:13.599
I am your host, Jennifer Robin Terry.
00:00:14.240 --> 00:00:16.879
Who is the American working class?
00:00:16.879 --> 00:00:23.839
If your image comes from the media or a Hollywood movie, you're likely missing a big part of the story.
00:00:24.640 --> 00:00:25.920
My guest today is Dr.
00:00:25.920 --> 00:00:33.520
Aimee Loiselle, Associate Professor, and the Stuart and Joyce Robbins Distinguished Chair of History at West Virginia University.
00:00:33.520 --> 00:00:44.960
She is the author of Beyond Norma Rae: How Puerto Rican and Southern White Women Fought for a Place in the American Working Class, published by the University of North Carolina Press.
00:00:45.359 --> 00:00:46.399
Welcome, Aimee.
00:00:46.399 --> 00:00:50.719
It is so nice to meet you, and I'm glad you're joining me here on the Clio Dialogues.
00:00:51.039 --> 00:00:52.560
Thank you so much for inviting me.
00:00:52.719 --> 00:00:59.039
When I saw a podcast about how history connects to contemporary issues, I had to jump at the chance.
00:00:59.359 --> 00:01:01.039
I'm so excited about this conversation.
00:01:01.039 --> 00:01:05.359
Your book is labor history, it's a Hollywood history, it's a media critique.
00:01:05.359 --> 00:01:18.159
I want to start with the film Norma Rae, because as a historian, and I'm sure this may be familiar to many historians, that when I watch a movie that's based on a true story, I am constantly asking, did that really happen?
00:01:18.159 --> 00:01:22.239
And then I go down these rabbit holes where I'm searching and, you know, looking for these things.
00:01:22.239 --> 00:01:30.480
So the 1979 Academy Award-winning film Norma Rae was based on Crystal Lee Sutton's story, right?
00:01:30.480 --> 00:01:32.640
The story of a Southern textile worker.
00:01:32.640 --> 00:01:36.560
But the film is called Norma Rae and not Crystal Lee.
00:01:36.560 --> 00:01:44.400
Can you talk a little bit about why the filmmakers deliberately changed not only the title character, but many things in the story?
00:01:44.640 --> 00:02:00.400
Once we start from the idea that nothing Hollywood makes in television or in movies is going to be accurate, then it frees us up to think about why did they break from certain accuracies or from certain literal historical moments.
00:02:00.400 --> 00:02:05.359
When I started diving into why they made the changes, it was incredibly illuminating.
00:02:05.359 --> 00:02:11.199
And I developed this idea: oh, there's creativity and then there's creative business decisions.
00:02:11.199 --> 00:02:25.599
And Hollywood, since these are products that cost millions and millions of dollars and they want to make tens of millions of dollars, it's heavy on the business and lighter on the creative side when the director has to make certain choices.
00:02:25.599 --> 00:02:30.400
Crystal Lee was contacted because it was based on her biography.
00:02:30.400 --> 00:02:31.520
She didn't write it.
00:02:31.520 --> 00:02:38.000
The journalist who had done a story about her found her activism with the textile workers' union really interesting.
00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:41.039
So he then interviewed her and did a book.
00:02:41.039 --> 00:02:44.560
Some women producers in Hollywood thought this is great.
00:02:44.560 --> 00:02:49.439
And they're some of the first independent women producers really emerging out of women's liberation.
00:02:49.439 --> 00:02:55.520
They contacted her because they wanted her feedback, but right from the get-go, they said, we're not offering you any money.
00:02:55.520 --> 00:02:59.280
So they were like, this is going to be unpaid, and we just want your feedback.
00:02:59.280 --> 00:03:04.960
And Crystal Lee was willing to do it, but her feedback was, I don't like your script.
00:03:04.960 --> 00:03:09.039
You make it seem as if I started the labor organizing.
00:03:09.039 --> 00:03:10.080
And I didn't.
00:03:10.080 --> 00:03:13.599
It was already going on for years before I joined.
00:03:13.599 --> 00:03:21.039
And it was mostly the black workers who had broken segregation after the Civil Rights Act who were driving the early union.
00:03:21.039 --> 00:03:23.439
And the producers and director didn't like that.
00:03:23.439 --> 00:03:29.199
Hollywood, if it wants to make a big story, wants a hero and an underdog hero, even better.
00:03:29.199 --> 00:03:36.479
And in the 1970s, during women's liberation, a woman underdog hero, they really thought that was going to be marketable.
00:03:36.479 --> 00:03:42.319
So they just stopped talking to her and changed all the names, and it became Norma Rae.
00:03:42.800 --> 00:03:43.280
Wow.
00:03:43.439 --> 00:03:44.479
Well, that is crazy.
00:03:44.479 --> 00:03:45.919
They just cut her out.
00:03:46.719 --> 00:03:48.639
Did they keep anything from her life?
00:03:48.879 --> 00:03:50.639
They kept a lot of details.
00:03:50.639 --> 00:03:55.280
And like most movies based on a true story, they have to compress a lot.
00:03:55.280 --> 00:04:03.439
So they did compress time, and she'd actually been married twice by the time she joined the labor organizing.
00:04:03.439 --> 00:04:06.960
They compress it, and you just meet her second husband.
00:04:06.960 --> 00:04:08.319
He worked at the paper mill.
00:04:08.319 --> 00:04:10.319
She met him after her older sister.
00:04:10.319 --> 00:04:20.399
They were like, Well, we need her to meet this guy, but we don't have the time for a sister who knows his friend and introduces them, and he works at a paper mill.
00:04:20.399 --> 00:04:23.600
So they just compressed it all down to one location.
00:04:23.600 --> 00:04:29.040
They met at the job where she works, and his name was changed to Sonny for the movie.
00:04:29.040 --> 00:04:42.319
And like in real life, Sonny gets annoyed at Norma Ray's organizing that she's not around the house enough and she's not cleaning and she's not cooking for the kids and he's having to make them sandwiches and he doesn't see her.
00:04:42.319 --> 00:04:56.000
So all of that is accurate to history, but they changed the union organizer, which I found really indicative of the director's thinking because the real organizer came from West Virginia.
00:04:56.000 --> 00:04:58.399
He was older in his like late 60s.
00:04:58.399 --> 00:05:01.839
He'd been a union organizer for the United Mine Workers.
00:05:01.839 --> 00:05:04.560
He's married, he's from West Virginia, he's got kids.
00:05:04.560 --> 00:05:18.560
This union organizer in the movie becomes a Jewish New York intellectual organizer who is young, often wears like his shirt unbuttoned, is kind of made into a union hunk.
00:05:18.560 --> 00:05:21.920
And he's not married.
00:05:21.920 --> 00:05:28.160
He's got a feminist girlfriend who is a leftist lawyer in New York City.
00:05:28.160 --> 00:05:35.920
He meets Norma at a motel where she's having a liaison with a man, and she says she wants to break it off with this guy.
00:05:35.920 --> 00:05:37.439
He's a traveling salesman.
00:05:37.439 --> 00:05:40.480
He slaps her and calls her all these names.
00:05:40.480 --> 00:05:50.160
Reuben, the New York organizer, hears it, and it's the start of this weird sexual tension between Norma and Ruben that drives the story.
00:05:50.160 --> 00:05:51.519
And none of this happened.
00:05:51.519 --> 00:05:54.480
So none of the stuff around the union organizer happened.
00:05:54.480 --> 00:05:56.959
It was about creative business decision.
00:05:56.959 --> 00:06:07.759
The director openly said a little sexual tension between these lead characters was going to make it a more sellable and a more appealing movie to a lot of people.
00:06:08.079 --> 00:06:10.319
Can you tell us about the iconic scene?
00:06:10.319 --> 00:06:15.199
Sally Field, who plays Crystal Lee, jumps up on the table with this handwritten sign that says union.
00:06:15.199 --> 00:06:16.879
She stands up there for a long time.
00:06:16.879 --> 00:06:18.399
Is this something that really happened?
00:06:18.720 --> 00:06:21.519
Yes, and that to me is really interesting.
00:06:21.519 --> 00:06:23.439
Crystal Lee does do that.
00:06:23.439 --> 00:06:38.399
There's a letter posted on the company bulletin board that said to all the black workers in this mill, you are being sold promises by the union that you will get to dominate the mills by joining the union, and that's not true.
00:06:38.399 --> 00:06:45.040
And companies did this all the time to try to create racial tension between the black workers and the white workers in these mills.
00:06:45.040 --> 00:06:46.560
So it was this false letter.
00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:53.839
Crystal Lee does copy it just like in the movie, and she's told that she's gonna get fired if she keeps doing it.
00:06:53.839 --> 00:06:54.800
She keeps doing it.
00:06:54.800 --> 00:07:08.480
They compress time in the movie because, in historical reality, Crystal goes back to her workstation, she works for another hour, then there's this big supper outside, a big picnic to celebrate safety in the mill.
00:07:08.480 --> 00:07:19.040
And she goes to that, and all these workers are talking to her because they know a bunch of workers were trying to copy this letter and that she was the only one that stood up to the boss men and finished it.
00:07:19.040 --> 00:07:27.680
So all these workers know, and all the union members are like, You got it, you got it word for word, so we can send it into the National Labor Relations Board with a grievance.
00:07:27.680 --> 00:07:29.920
And she's like, Yeah, but they said I'm gonna be fired.
00:07:29.920 --> 00:07:33.279
So it's this whole collective shared moment.
00:07:33.279 --> 00:07:37.199
And then when she goes back in after the supper, they're like, go to the supervisors.
00:07:37.199 --> 00:07:44.959
They tell her to call her husband because it's the patriarchal setup, and they're like, go get your husband and have him come and pick you up.
00:07:44.959 --> 00:07:47.920
Instead, she goes back to her workstation.
00:07:47.920 --> 00:07:50.079
She does not work in the weaving room.
00:07:50.079 --> 00:07:53.360
She actually works packing at the end of the line.
00:07:53.360 --> 00:07:56.560
She takes towels and gift sets and puts them in boxes.
00:07:56.560 --> 00:07:59.600
She writes on one of the pieces of the gift set boxes.
00:07:59.600 --> 00:08:06.879
Union stands on the table until the police show up and then they do drag her down and take her out.
00:08:06.879 --> 00:08:11.759
What they change with the movie is they take out a lot of that collective stuff.
00:08:11.759 --> 00:08:15.120
There's Norma and one other woman trying to copy the letter.
00:08:15.120 --> 00:08:23.360
They seem to be the only ones that know about it, when in reality, dozens of people in the mill knew about this letter and had been talking about it.
00:08:23.360 --> 00:08:27.279
Norma finally copies it, but what she doesn't go to a supper.
00:08:27.279 --> 00:08:30.079
Again, they have to compress time to make it a 90-minute movie.
00:08:30.079 --> 00:08:39.039
So she goes right back to her workstation and they have Norma working in the textile weaving room because they felt that was more like a southern mill vibe.
00:08:39.039 --> 00:08:44.559
And they actually pumped extra lint into it to make it even lintier and dustier.
00:08:44.559 --> 00:08:53.679
And then Norma does write union on a piece of cardboard, but again, it makes it seem as if like she alone, and this isn't to take away from the dramatic.
00:08:53.679 --> 00:09:07.360
Sally Field does an amazing job portraying Norma and capturing the disappointments and complexities and the fear that a woman would have in one of these towns getting up like this, knowing that you're going to be arrested and dragged out.
00:09:07.360 --> 00:09:11.519
So, you know, you knew that was going to happen if you stood up to these bosses.
00:09:11.519 --> 00:09:13.759
So she did do a great job capturing that.
00:09:13.759 --> 00:09:22.559
My concern as a historian of labor history is more that the director and producers made the decision to make it seem like Norma and Ruben started this campaign.
00:09:22.559 --> 00:09:36.399
Norma was the only one that really understood this letter and what she was doing, and that she's then dragged out, and it's only Ruben and her husband that are involved in trying to help her, when in reality, dozens of workers were involved.
00:09:36.639 --> 00:09:41.600
So it takes a collective story and turns it into an individual hero's journey.
00:09:41.840 --> 00:09:42.000
Yes.
00:09:42.000 --> 00:09:53.759
You have Norma Rae, this individual hero, and what happens is they crop and crop and crop that image down, the one that you talked about of her standing on the table with the union sign, and they crop out everything.
00:09:53.759 --> 00:10:02.000
They crop out the factory, the workers, and it just becomes this little still image of Norma standing by herself with the union sign.
00:10:02.000 --> 00:10:08.639
And this, and people start calling it a Norma Rae moment or going Norma Rae for people just standing up for anything.
00:10:08.639 --> 00:10:16.399
It could be that somebody was mad that their boyfriend didn't take them out for Valentine's Day and she yelled at him and she had a Norma Rae moment.
00:10:16.399 --> 00:10:25.600
On a website, somebody was like, I wanted Nila wafers in my office snack room, and nobody would let me use the office budget to buy Nilla wafers.
00:10:25.600 --> 00:10:30.960
And so she took the Norma image and put Nila instead of union.
00:10:30.960 --> 00:10:33.840
I'm looking for all of these references to Norma Rae.
00:10:33.840 --> 00:10:35.759
None of them refer to labor unions.
00:10:35.759 --> 00:10:38.080
None of them refer to worker organizing.
00:10:38.080 --> 00:11:00.399
And I said, something in this image and this idea of going Norma Rae for a moment is capturing this neoliberal individualism, this hyper attention to that the individual, if they just did the right things and if they just stood up for themselves, the individual will save the day or make their life better or get what they want.
00:11:00.399 --> 00:11:05.039
And I thought to myself, wow, that's really different than Crystal Lee's message.
00:11:05.039 --> 00:11:09.279
Crystal Lee's message is you have to have a union, you have to have worker organizing.
00:11:09.279 --> 00:11:13.200
Bosses will never listen to us if we're not in a big organized group.
00:11:13.519 --> 00:11:16.240
You don't actually begin the book with the film.
00:11:16.240 --> 00:11:20.720
You begin by talking about Puerto Rican women who worked in the textile industry.
00:11:20.720 --> 00:11:28.639
Can you tell us a little bit about that and why we cannot understand Norma Rae without understanding the experience of Puerto Rican women?
00:11:29.120 --> 00:11:32.559
This was a decision as a women's historian.
00:11:32.559 --> 00:11:37.679
I did not want to perpetuate the erasure of Puerto Rican women.
00:11:37.679 --> 00:11:44.559
There was this kind of fascination in the 60s and 70s with Southern people and poor Southern workers.
00:11:44.559 --> 00:12:04.879
You saw it in like the Andy Griffiths show and Beverly Hillbilly's and Waltons, foregrounding white characters, and then particularly white working characters, usually men, really eliminates the fact that Puerto Rican women were recruited into the textile and apparel industry as soon as the United States occupied Puerto Rico in 1898.
00:12:05.200 --> 00:12:07.200
Can you tell us a little bit about that history?
00:12:07.200 --> 00:12:10.320
Because I think listeners may not be fully aware.
00:12:10.320 --> 00:12:12.799
How does Puerto Rico become part of the U.S.?
00:12:13.200 --> 00:12:23.279
In the late 1800s, the United States reaches kind of continental capacities from the Atlantic to the Pacific to immediately start talking about offshore expansion.
00:12:23.279 --> 00:12:30.320
Many politicians and trade executives and business people are aware that the Spanish Empire is collapsing.
00:12:30.320 --> 00:12:36.480
It can barely hold itself together in Europe, let alone hold on to its possessions in the Caribbean.
00:12:36.480 --> 00:12:41.440
So there's this ongoing debate about whether the United States should take those.
00:12:41.440 --> 00:12:46.399
Some people say we don't want to fully absorb them into the United States because they're people of color.
00:12:46.399 --> 00:12:53.360
So there was a lot of tension between policymakers and business executives and military leaders about what should happen.
00:12:53.360 --> 00:12:58.480
Then in 1898, there's an explosion of a U.S.
00:12:58.480 --> 00:12:59.840
ship near Cuba.
00:12:59.840 --> 00:13:07.360
Many historians have made different arguments about whether that was an actual bomb or some type of problem in the engine room.
00:13:07.360 --> 00:13:19.679
But the United States uses it as the opportunity to go down and occupy Cuba and then by extension Puerto Rico in order to get control of this area because the Spanish Empire can't control its colonies anymore.
00:13:19.679 --> 00:13:20.879
It's becoming dangerous.
00:13:20.879 --> 00:13:21.840
So the U.S.
00:13:21.840 --> 00:13:25.679
military occupies Cuba and Puerto Rico at the same time.
00:13:25.679 --> 00:13:29.919
They also in the Pacific occupy Guam and the Philippines.
00:13:29.919 --> 00:13:35.600
This is all part of these larger conversations that they've been having about what is U.S.
00:13:35.600 --> 00:13:38.240
expansion going to look like past the continent.
00:13:38.240 --> 00:13:41.919
So Puerto Rico initially doesn't really fight when the U.S.
00:13:41.919 --> 00:13:55.440
military comes because they think, as many people have thought when the US military arrives, that they were going to help them as a people get rid of their Spanish empire oppressors and then give them independence.
00:13:55.440 --> 00:13:56.639
And that doesn't happen.
00:13:56.639 --> 00:14:02.720
Instead, the US occupies and is still the overseer of Puerto Rican government, the economy.
00:14:02.720 --> 00:14:06.960
Puerto Rico remains a colony of the United States to this day.
00:14:06.960 --> 00:14:11.279
And in 1898, businesses immediately are like, what's our opportunity here?
00:14:11.279 --> 00:14:21.840
So they go down there and they see, wow, there's these amazing seamstresses that are doing embroidery and sewing, and they're doing it on hand machines or foot pedal machines.
00:14:21.840 --> 00:14:34.720
Imagine if we came down here and brought materials to them, or in a couple of years, they start actually building sweatshops down there with electricity and the ability to produce even more items.
00:14:34.720 --> 00:14:38.159
They start at the same time as the New South.
00:14:38.159 --> 00:14:43.919
So the New South is being heavily recruited in the 1890s into doing more textile work.
00:14:43.919 --> 00:14:51.120
Big investors in the South start building mills and selling them into big conglomerates and you have big corporations forming.
00:14:51.120 --> 00:14:57.759
As that's happening, Puerto Rican women at the same time are being used, but they offer a different option.
00:14:57.759 --> 00:14:59.919
Companies are always looking for options.
00:14:59.919 --> 00:15:02.639
Like what's going to be the cheaper situation?
00:15:02.639 --> 00:15:13.919
And when there's easy shipping from Puerto Rico, they like that because Puerto Rico is exempted from certain business taxes and banking regulations because it's an offshore colony.
00:15:13.919 --> 00:15:23.039
So Puerto Rico becomes an experimental area where companies lobby the US government to say you should exempt Puerto Rico from all these things.
00:15:23.039 --> 00:15:31.919
And then we'll modernize Puerto Rico as if they're doing them a favor, even though what they're actually doing is using skilled labor at a cheaper cost.
00:15:31.919 --> 00:15:33.679
So that's why I wanted to start with them.
00:15:33.679 --> 00:15:48.320
And I had two friends, Irma Medina and Maria Salgado, who their mothers worked in the mills and factories that eventually open in like New York and Massachusetts and Connecticut into the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and even as late as the 1980s.
00:15:48.320 --> 00:15:55.200
Puerto Rican women are being recruited from Puerto Rico to come up to these remaining factories and mills into the 1980s.
00:15:55.440 --> 00:15:59.120
And so how do Puerto Rican women get involved with union activism?
00:15:59.440 --> 00:16:04.000
The union that goes down to Puerto Rico is the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.
00:16:04.000 --> 00:16:14.639
So the ILG, which is very active in New York, starts meeting Puerto Rican, but also some uh West Indian women in New York who are being recruited into the apparel factories up there.
00:16:14.639 --> 00:16:21.360
They start then sending ILG representatives down to Puerto Rico to meet with women down there.
00:16:21.360 --> 00:16:26.799
The Textile Workers Union of America is the one that's active in the South that Crystal Lee joins.
00:16:26.799 --> 00:16:32.159
Crystal Lee did not know any Puerto Rican organizers, and Puerto Rican organizers did not know Crystal Lee.
00:16:32.159 --> 00:16:37.200
These are very segregated labor markets, and they're intentionally segregated by U.S.
00:16:37.200 --> 00:16:38.720
trade offices, U.S.
00:16:38.720 --> 00:16:41.440
colonial offices, and by the businesses.
00:16:41.440 --> 00:16:47.279
But these unions are very much aware of each other and they're very parallel and trying to organize.
00:16:47.279 --> 00:16:53.360
And Puerto Rican women are in the ILG in Puerto Rico, in New York, in Connecticut.
00:16:53.360 --> 00:16:56.639
They are active union members, they're organizers.
00:16:56.639 --> 00:17:03.279
There's a big walkout in the 1950s in New York City, and Puerto Rican women are a big part of that walkout.
00:17:03.279 --> 00:17:10.960
I wanted to make sure that their work, their labor organizing gets told, and how they tried to tell their own story.
00:17:10.960 --> 00:17:13.440
Just like Crystal Lee tried to tell her own story.
00:17:13.440 --> 00:17:23.519
Puerto Rican women did interviews and there was a big public history project in the 80s where a lot of them interviewed and they said, We want our stories to get out.
00:17:23.519 --> 00:17:28.240
Like they were aware that they were telling their story and they wanted to be heard.
00:17:28.240 --> 00:17:29.519
These women were savvy.
00:17:29.759 --> 00:17:32.240
And one of those women was Gloria Maldonado.
00:17:32.240 --> 00:17:33.440
Can you tell us about her?
00:17:33.680 --> 00:17:36.400
So she became the counterpoint to Crystal Lee.
00:17:36.400 --> 00:17:41.599
It was much harder to find a Puerto Rican woman who appeared consistently through the archives.
00:17:41.599 --> 00:17:53.279
There were many hundreds of names, but Gloria Maldonado appeared in a variety of archives, in a variety of collections, and in some newspapers because she was so active.
00:17:53.279 --> 00:17:58.559
And I loved that both women were often called loudmouth and pushy.
00:17:58.559 --> 00:18:02.160
I love loudmouth and pushy women.
00:18:02.160 --> 00:18:09.519
Because that just means it's a woman who is speaking her mind and sharing her conclusions and making suggestions.
00:18:09.519 --> 00:18:22.319
Gloria Maldonado, because she was very assertive, union leaders, men, white men, recognized that and thought we need to get her up out of the factory floor and get her into some leadership position.
00:18:22.319 --> 00:18:27.119
So she was part of the New York Labor Council, the Hispanic Labor Council.
00:18:27.119 --> 00:18:36.319
She worked at a workers' studies program at Rutgers University that was not geared towards college students, but was geared towards working people.
00:18:36.319 --> 00:18:40.799
She was part of the Smithsonian 1976 display.
00:18:40.799 --> 00:18:47.359
So she was very active beyond just the traditional union organizing or shop floor action.
00:18:47.359 --> 00:18:50.559
She wanted to carry the message out to a bigger audience.
00:18:50.799 --> 00:18:54.559
Was she ever featured in a film or a documentary or anything like that?
00:18:54.880 --> 00:19:08.000
So the Public History Project did create a radio documentary, and it also won awards for best like regional documentary, and it played in New York City, which is a large market.
00:19:08.000 --> 00:19:14.720
Maldonado was one of the key featured characters because she was assertive and spoke confidently.
00:19:14.720 --> 00:19:16.240
So the producers loved her.
00:19:16.240 --> 00:19:22.000
She did challenge them, just like Crystal Lee challenged the producers of the Crystal Lee script.
00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:26.240
Maldonado felt that they had taken some of her words out of context.
00:19:26.240 --> 00:19:41.119
And she wrote them a letter and said, I'd like you to edit the show because you make it seem like I'm critiquing Puerto Rican people or the unions when what I was really saying was we just need more Puerto Rican people in union leadership.
00:19:41.119 --> 00:19:43.359
But I wasn't critiquing the union.
00:19:43.359 --> 00:19:46.640
Because unions get criticized all the time in the mainstream press.
00:19:46.640 --> 00:19:54.559
So Crystal Lee and Maldonado were both fully aware that they wanted to get a positive message out and say, unions are good.
00:19:54.960 --> 00:20:03.759
Gloria Maldonado noted that employers often use the threat of immigration enforcement to discourage women from union organizing.
00:20:03.759 --> 00:20:04.880
How did that work?
00:20:05.200 --> 00:20:22.640
After the 1965 Immigration Act, which changes the quotas, increasingly you have people coming from the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica, Barbados, the West Indies, but also Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and that creates an increasing flow of people who are undocumented.
00:20:22.640 --> 00:20:36.880
So you have family members that become established in New York City, and then their niece or nephew from the Dominican Republic or from Ecuador wants to come to the United States and they come undocumented.
00:20:36.880 --> 00:20:43.680
What Maldonado as a labor organizer is seeing is that these sweatshops are happy to hire undocumented women.
00:20:43.680 --> 00:20:58.640
But as soon as the undocumented women start joining with women that have citizenship to start organizing a union, then the sweatshop owners or the factory managers will say, Well, we're going to call immigration if you keep doing this with the union.
00:20:58.640 --> 00:21:06.960
So Puerto Rican women have citizenship, but a lot of these other Spanish-speaking, but also English-speaking from the British West Indies are not.
00:21:06.960 --> 00:21:23.039
So Maldonado says that that starts to become a really effective anti-union tactic in the 70s because the undocumented people coming in are rightfully terrified of having a raid what they would have called INS.
00:21:23.039 --> 00:21:24.079
It wasn't ICE then.
00:21:24.079 --> 00:21:28.400
So now it's ICE, but they would have called it La Migra or INS.
00:21:28.559 --> 00:21:30.079
There's a longer history to this.
00:21:30.079 --> 00:21:32.160
It's not just started with Trump and ICE.
00:21:32.319 --> 00:21:32.640
Yes.
00:21:32.640 --> 00:21:33.920
It's um rough.
00:21:34.240 --> 00:21:40.400
Recently there was a lot of conversation around Bad Bunny's halftime performance at the Super Bowl.
00:21:40.400 --> 00:21:46.880
There seemed to be a lot of confusion about Puerto Rico as part of the United States.
00:21:46.880 --> 00:21:51.680
Does that suggest that the idea of who is American is still unsettled?
00:21:52.000 --> 00:21:56.880
I think who is American is the great project of the United States.
00:21:56.880 --> 00:22:04.079
In the 1890s, as the United States starts to Taking over places like Puerto Rico and Guam and the Philippines.
00:22:04.079 --> 00:22:09.519
The United States has to determine who are citizenship, who does not.
00:22:09.519 --> 00:22:14.000
And initially, none of those colonies had citizenship in 1917.
00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:19.599
So it was, you know, almost 20 years later, Puerto Ricans get US citizenship.
00:22:19.599 --> 00:22:25.279
But when they're in Puerto Rico, they don't have any ability to participate in national elections.
00:22:25.279 --> 00:22:35.680
But when they come to the continental US, then they can participate as citizens in all aspects of elections and electoral politics and property ownership.
00:22:35.680 --> 00:22:42.240
But I also think Bad Bunny does a little twist on this, and he really does this very well in that halftime show.
00:22:42.240 --> 00:22:45.839
He links Puerto Rico out of the United States.
00:22:45.839 --> 00:22:47.599
So he claims his citizenship.
00:22:47.599 --> 00:22:49.680
Like he's very much like I am a U.S.
00:22:49.680 --> 00:22:55.599
citizen, but he links Puerto Rico out into the Caribbean and the greater Central and South America.
00:22:55.599 --> 00:23:00.799
He has the part where they're all waving flags of all the different Caribbean nations in South America.
00:23:00.799 --> 00:23:16.960
That's Pan-Americanism or Pan-Latinidad, where there's this idea of we might be part of the United States or we might have been part of the Spanish Empire, or maybe they still have strong ties to like France or England, but we're not necessarily underneath that umbrella.
00:23:16.960 --> 00:23:30.480
So Bad Bunny is quite savvy, and you know, he's clearly politically engaging this concept of we're citizens of the United States and we are members of the larger Caribbean and the larger South America.
00:23:30.480 --> 00:23:33.200
And I'm not going to compromise on either of those.
00:23:33.200 --> 00:23:43.119
Many people in the lead up to that said, How are we having somebody who is not a US citizen perform at the greatest like US sports event?
00:23:43.119 --> 00:23:50.400
There were people on social media posting sting, U2, entire lists of performers that were not US citizens.
00:23:50.400 --> 00:23:52.640
And then and he is a US citizen.
00:23:52.640 --> 00:24:05.039
There is why we need intersectional analysis because race and gender and ethnicity, religion, all of that intersects to have people perceive who is a real American.
00:24:05.039 --> 00:24:11.039
And according to citizenship laws, Bad Bunny is a real American, and so are all Puerto Ricans.
00:24:11.039 --> 00:24:17.119
I think the project of who is an American continues as part of the ongoing project.
00:24:17.119 --> 00:24:31.279
You know, we still we're in massive debates right now with the deportations and changing of asylum laws, and that is really sparking again this very public, popular debate about what is an American.
00:24:31.519 --> 00:24:36.720
So legal citizenship is one thing, but cultural recognition as an American really is something else.
00:24:36.720 --> 00:24:38.799
And that brings us back to the working class.
00:24:38.799 --> 00:24:43.599
Why does it matter who we picture when we think of the American working class?
00:24:43.920 --> 00:24:55.119
So a school of thought really emerges in the late 20th century of this idea that culture is critical to forming the meanings and understandings of the world.
00:24:55.119 --> 00:24:59.440
Yes, finances, economics, and politics matter.
00:24:59.440 --> 00:25:20.559
But what became increasingly clear, especially with the explosion of popular culture in radio, television, movies, and now streaming and social media, is that the way people understand finances, economy, and politics is completely framed or explained in their mind through their cultural experience.
00:25:20.559 --> 00:25:26.480
And so somebody can understand that a union would be good for them at their job.
00:25:26.480 --> 00:25:43.759
But if they've heard repeatedly that unions are corrupt and get these pop culture messages of Jimmy Hoffa and unions are just obstacles and they just take money out of your paycheck, that there's this cognitive dissonance, but the emotional power is in the culture.
00:25:43.759 --> 00:25:48.480
So they're going to lean into making decisions through their cultural understandings.
00:25:48.480 --> 00:26:00.880
When policymakers don't address the understanding of who is the American working class and they just try to force through legislation, then they often bump up against people's misunderstandings.
00:26:00.880 --> 00:26:08.079
So for example, the majority of farm workers are immigrants and many of them undocumented.
00:26:08.079 --> 00:26:12.000
But there's that perception that they're not the American working class, right?
00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:20.480
So the American working class in movies and television, and even standing behind Trump at his rallies, are men in hard hats.
00:26:20.480 --> 00:26:25.599
He might have a few women, but they're men in hard hats, construction caps, trucker caps.
00:26:25.599 --> 00:26:34.720
And so the conception of the American working class, it's still that it's mostly white, maybe some men of color in masculine industries.
00:26:34.720 --> 00:26:45.839
And she always advocated for that bigger idea of the American working class.
00:26:45.839 --> 00:26:55.599
Both Maldonado and Crystal Lee said, all people in all factories and plants and farm work and whatever, they're all part of the working class.
00:26:55.599 --> 00:27:04.400
And so they really understood globalization from a worker's point of view and really wanted a larger labor movement for all workers.
00:27:04.400 --> 00:27:17.279
We need an updated version of the American working class that addresses the fact that many of them are immigrants, many of them are not in these old nostalgic factories and what they do for our society.
00:27:17.279 --> 00:27:19.680
These women knew what they were talking about.
00:27:20.799 --> 00:27:28.720
To learn more about this and any book featured on the Clio Dialogues, read Clio's book reviews at www.cliodialogues.com.
00:27:28.720 --> 00:27:31.599
This has been the Clio Dialogues.
00:27:31.599 --> 00:27:33.920
Please like, follow, and subscribe.
00:27:33.920 --> 00:27:38.720
And join me again next time because history isn't finished with us.