# Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat

Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat is a 1983 book by J. Sakai that aims to provide a historical account of the formation of whiteness in the United States. Written from a Marxist perspective, the book argues that the white working class in the United States constitutes a privileged labor aristocracy. The book had some influence among prisoners associated with the Black Liberation Army.

## Background

J. Sakai, the book's pseudonymous author, was born to Japanese immigrants and worked in the US auto industry. Sakai was radicalized through the internment of Japanese Americans, radical factions of the American labor movement, and his involvement with the Black freedom struggle as it evolved from the civil rights movement to the Black liberation movement. Sakai and his book are tied to the history of Chicago-based Black nationalism in the late 20th century, serving as a key influence within political discourse among imprisoned Black Liberation Army (BLA) members.

## Publication

Settlers was first published as a letter-sized pamphlet in 1983 under the title The Mythology of the White Proletariat: A Short Course in Understanding Babylon. Settlers was distributed within covert networks organized by activists associated with the BLA. A fourth edition was published jointly by PM Press and Kersplebedeb in 2014 under the title Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat from Mayflower to Modern. The 2014 edition eschews the oversized format and includes two new additions: an interview with Sakai and an essay on reparations for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

## Summary

Settlers argues that the class system in the United States is built upon the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans and that the white working class in the United States constitutes a privileged labor aristocracy that lacks proletarian consciousness. Arguing that the white working class possesses a petit-bourgeois and reformist consciousness, Sakai posits that only the colonized peoples of the United States constitutes its proletariat.

## Style

Marxist–Leninist–Maoist academic Joshua Moufawad-Paul guessed that the book's lack of success in academia is due to its breaking the "implicit rules of intellectual chivalry". Historian Dan Berger noted that the book was more pessimistic than other works on race written during the same time period.

## Impact and reception

Settlers went largely unnoticed within academia, though it has been somewhat influential among radicals. Historian David Roediger cited Settlers in his book The Wages of Whiteness making it among the few scholarly publications to reference the work. Roediger stated that while he preferred Ted Allen's works on white identity, criticizing what he felt was the book's "at times 'categorical and transhistorical' dismissal of those defined as white", he had hoped other labor historians would take notice of the book's arguments. Berger described Settlers as a "paradigm-setting" book that developed conceptions about settler colonialism that would later become axiomatic within the field of critical ethnic studies.
Some critics praised the book's account of the historical construction of whiteness and class in the United States. Kevin Bruyneel, writing in the book Settler Memory, described Settlers as among the first and most comprehensive works aiming to define American whiteness by "its historical foundations in settler life". Writing in Labour/Le Travail, Fred Burrill acknowledged criticisms of the book over its usage of contingent categories, but otherwise praised the book's "clear articulation" of the development of classes in the United States.
Fredy Perlman, in a footnote to the essay "The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism", described the work as a "sensitive" application of Mao-Zedong-Thought to American history; however, Perlman objected to its political prescriptions and argued that Settlers blatantly aimed to reproduce the same repressive systems described earlier in the work. In return, former Black Panther Kuwasi Balagoon wrote a response to Perlman's essay from prison calling him a "cheap-shot artist who offered an underhanded review" and praising Settlers as a historically faithful work, in spite of its Marxism. While largely agreeing with Sakai's analysis, Balagoon opined that grassroots collectives would better serve the oppressed than mass institutions "under the leadership of a communist party".
Weather Underground militant David Gilbert praised the book's historical content as "revealing and useful", though he expressed disagreement at the book's conclusions, arguing that Sakai had downplayed historical examples that evidenced the possibility for class struggle among white working-class Americans. Both Gilbert and Berger lamented the book's lack of attention to gender, with Gilbert noting that the women's movement could form a progressive current within the white working class. In the Monthly Review economist Michael Yates critiqued Gilbert's review of the book as "too generous", calling Sakai's account of white Americans "preposterous on its face" and "an insult to those whites who have suffered the grossest exploitation and still do".
In 2024 Owen Hatherley wrote in Red Pepper that there was an "online cult" around the book.

## Notes and citations

Notes
* ↑ Republished in 2014 as Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat From Mayflower to Modern and originally published as The Mythology of the White Proletariat: A Short Course in Understanding Babylon
Citations
* ↑ Berger 2016, p. 219: "Sakai is the child of Japanese immigrants and a former autoworker."
* ↑ Berger 2016, p. 224: "...although for many, including Sakai, politicization came earlier—through the Japanese internment camps, through the communist-inspired sectors of the labor movement..."
* ↑ Berger 2016, p. 219: "Both [J. Sakai and Butch Lee] were politicized through their involvement with the black freedom struggle, from the civil rights phase through its revolutionary nationalist incarnations that described itself as part of a black liberation movement."
* ↑ Berger 2016, p. 219: "Sakai and Lee have been key nodes in the circuits of intellectual discourse among imprisoned radicals, especially from the BLA. Their political biographies, like the books they produced, are tied to the fascinating but little known history of revolutionary nationalism based in Chicago from the 1960s to the 1990s."
* ↑ Berger 2016, p. 221: "David Roediger bought Settlers at a left bookstore in Chicago in the early 1980s, when it was first published as an oversized pamphlet called The Mythology of the White Proletariat."; Moufawad-Paul 2010: "...[the] 8.5x11 graphic novel size does not fit the acceptable standards of an 'authoritative' book."; Bruyneel 2021: "Originally published in 1983 under the title Mythology of the White Proletariat: A Short Course in Understanding Babylon."
* ↑ Moufawad-Paul 2016, pp. 140–142; Berger 2016, p. 219: "These books were written and circulated within a semiclandestine network shaped by revolutionaries close to or part of the Black Liberation Army (BLA), the military offshoot of the Black Panther Party."
* 1 2 Berger 2016, p. 227: "The new edition includes an essay about the reparations given to Japanese Americans for their imprisonment during World War II, as well as an interview conducted with Sakai. It also features a new subtitle, From Mayflower to Modern, and a more traditional design than the previous editions."
* ↑ Moufawad-Paul 2010: "Perhaps the reason for its academic neglect can be blamed on its unsober use of language and rhetorical tone..."; review cited in Berger 2016, p. 227
* ↑ Berger 2016, p. 221: "It is far more pessimistic than even the work of other antiracist independent scholars tracking the invention of whiteness at the time, such as Ted Allen."
* ↑ Berger 2016, p. 221: "Although Settlers received almost no notice from academics, it made a small splash among revolutionaries in the early 1980s and still travels in these circles today."; Moufawad-Paul 2010 "...[Settlers] has remained at the edges of 'acceptable' social theory, just at the threshold of obscurity."
* ↑ Berger 2016, p. 221: "...Roediger was one of the first and remains one of the only people to cite Settlers in a scholarly publication, The Wages of Whiteness."
* ↑ Berger 2016, p. 221: "He said recently that he objected to the at times 'categorical and transhistorical' dismissal of those defined as white, preferring the formulations of Allen...He said he hoped labor historians would take notice of the book's arguments and also look to the land, although it seems that few, if any, noticed."
* ↑ Berger 2016, pp. 218–219
* ↑ Bruyneel 2021; Burrill 2019, p. 190
* ↑ Bruyneel 2021: "J. Sakai provided one of the earliest and most comprehensive readings of American whiteness as fundamentally defined by its historical foundations in settler life."
* ↑ Burrill 2019, p. 190: "And while Settlers has been criticized by some within the left for its Maoist over-reification of contingent categories like 'nation' and 'proletariat,' Sakai's book distinguishes itself as a work of theory in its clear articulation of the warped nature of class development in American society."
* ↑ Perlman 1985, p. 53: "As an application of Mao-Zedong-Thought to American history, it is the most sensitive Maoist work I've seen...The author mobilizes all these experiences of unmitigated terror, not to look for ways to supersede the system that perpetrated them, but to urge the victims to reproduce the same system among themselves...this work makes no attempt to hide or disguise its repressive aims;"; review cited in Berger 2016, p. 227
* ↑ Balagoon 1995, p. 15: "This is in spite of the fact that it is a Marxist work...Its historical recounting...has not been discounted publicly, to my knowledge, by anyone, including the cheap-shot artist who offered an underhanded review of it in the Fifth Estate called 'the continuing appeal of nationalism.'"; review cited in Berger 2016, p. 227
* ↑ Balagoon 1995, p. 15; review cited in Berger 2016, p. 227
* ↑ Gilbert 2004, p. 57: "Overall, it is a very revealing and useful look at U.S. history."
* ↑ Gilbert 2004, p. 59: "Sakai's survey of U.S. history understates the examples of fierce class struggle within the oppressor nation that imply at least some basis for dissatisfaction and disloyalty by working whites."
* ↑ Gilbert 2004, p. 59: "Here, Sakai enumerates class based solely on white male jobs in order to correct for situations where the woman's lower-status job is a second income for the family involved. This method, however, fails to take account of the growing number of families where the woman's wages are the primary income. The methodological question also relates to the potential for women's oppression to be a source for a progressive current within the white working class."; Berger 2016, p. 222: "[Night Vision] centralizes gender as an analytic in ways Settlers failed to do. Its gendered framework is one of several factors making Night Vision more resonant to contemporary scholarly debates."
* ↑ Yates 2018, p. 53: "Second, his reading of the Sakai book is too generous."
* ↑ Yates 2018, p. 54: "This is preposterous on its face, as any clear look at the data would indicate: a large and growing minority of white workers are poor, and all face stagnant or declining wages and diminishing life prospects. Besides, if white workers generated no profits from their labor, they would all be unemployed. Such a view is an insult to those whites who have suffered the grossest exploitation and still do."
* ↑ "Key words: Tankie". Red Pepper. 1 July 2024