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Discusses why whiteness emerged as an analytical concept in US historiography beginning with David Roediger's 'The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class' in 1999. This article surveys relevant literature and examines the usefulness of whiteness as a concept. Marxism laid the foundation for the Left's analyses of race, class, and economics; virtually every organization in the late 19th century (except the International Workers of the World) stressed class concerns over racial concerns. Max Shachtman's influential 'Communism and the Negro' (1933) argued that worker liberation would occur only after white workers championed the cause of blacks. The convergence of black radicalism and Marxism faltered during the early Cold War but reemerged during the late 1960's and 1970's and continued to influence scholarship through the turn of the 21st century.