Book Launch: Class War in America: How the Elites Divide the Nation by Asking Are You a Worker or Are You White?

About the Book

No matter who wins the White House in November, the loser is clear: the American worker.

Wage-earners in the U.S. have been taking it on the chin since Ronald Reagan began dismantling the liberal, interracial coalition that produced fatter and fatter paychecks for employees in the postwar era.

In defining the central problem as “race” rather than “class,” the Reagan revolution managed to pit workers against each other, giving employers carte blanche to nickel and dime their employees to death. Bill Clinton doubled down on Reagan's appeals to tribalism.

Equal parts literature and scholarship, Jon Jeter’s book– Class War in America: How the Elites Divide the Nation by Asking Are You a Worker or Are You White?–is a “bracing and thought-provoking study,” writes Kirkus Review.

A former Washington Post foreign correspondent, Jeter deploys “remarkable” “narrative skill” (Kirkus) to not only explain the growing inequality at the heart of Americans’ discontent in the Trump era, but to celebrate the proletariat’s triumphs dating back to the Civil War.

“We once were warriors,” he writes in the book’s opening pages, and proceeds to shine a light on the class war’s forgotten and unknown soldiers, from an ex-Confederate general in postbellum Virginia to Malcolm X; the African American mother who traveled the globe advocating for the release of the Scottsboro Boys to Ethel Rosenberg; the screenwriters known as the Hollywood 10 to the Black Chicagoans responsible for the election of the city’s first African American mayor, a staunch progressive.

"With his CLASS WAR IN AMERICA, Jon Jeter has fired a broadside from the left that will, in this utterly divided society, spark its share of argument and counter-argument. But one central theme of this book is beyond debate: Jeter's historical rendering of the American labor movement and capital's incessant misuse of race as a means of dividing workers from each other is carefully and definitively chronicled. Race hate and racial fears have long been the most valuable weapon in keeping working people disorganized, alienated and, in the end, cheated." –David Simon, creator of the HBO television series, The Wire

About the Author

JON JETER is a published book author and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist with more than 20 years of journalistic experience. He is a former Washington Post bureau chief and award-winning foreign correspondent on two continents, as well as a former radio and television producer for Chicago Public Media’s “THIS AMERICAN LIFE.”

Jeter is a Knight Fellowship recipient – Stanford University’s highest professional journalism award — as well as author of FLAT BROKE IN THE FREE MARKET (WW Norton, 2009) and co-author of A DAY LATE AND A DOLLAR SHORT (Wiley & Sons, 2010).

Jon works with both non-profit and for profit brands, utilizing his vast knowledge and experience in web, radio, and television content and production to drive communications strategies and develop stories that highlight the important work of these organizations. He is based out of the San Francisco Bay Area.