David R. Roediger is Babcock Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of "Towards the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays on Race, Politics, & Working Class History "(1994), "The Wages of Whiteness: Race & the Making of the American Working Class "(1991) and "Our Own Time: A History of American Labor & the Working Day "(1989) and editor of "Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White "(1998).