“Don't Complain”: Labor Anxiety, Racial Ideologies, and Moral Micromanagement in Rural South Carolina

Abstract

South Carolina's Black Belt counties are perennial targets of economic development programs. Economic development personnel focus on industrial recruitment and workforce development to remedy the economic woes of the region. They advertise an available, non-union workforce and free workforce training programs for industries considering locating in South Carolina. These training programs emphasize “soft skills,” a term used by employers, economic development personnel, and workforce development agencies to refer to traits or behaviors an employer desires in a worker, but that are not directly related to a specific job. This research situates the neoliberal turn towards “soft skills” in its historical context in the U.S. South. I draw on Clyde Woods' concept of “moral micromanagement” strategies to compare 20th-century industrial education and 21st-century soft skills training programs, demonstrating that soft skills training programs represent a continuity of racial ideologies and racialized labor regimes. Placing soft skills training within a longer history of moral micromanagement indicates that labor management practices associated with soft skills have as much to do with old ways of disciplining labor as new and highlights the co-constitution of labor anxiety and racial ideologies.