In seeking to compare the sensibility of waitresses with their male working-class counterparts as well as with their more elite sisters, I have thus far stressed the unanimity among this group of working-class women. Sisterhood and class solidarity had very real limits, however. The majority of waitress locals, for example, excluded black and Asian women from membership until the 1930s and 1940s. Although a few locals pursued issues of racial discrimination in hiring and promotion once the racial barriers fell, minority women continued to be relegated to the lowest-paid, least-desirable positions in the industry and remained underrepresented in the occupation as a whole.52 In addition, although waitress consciousness contained elements of class and gender identification, the strongest, most consistent aspect of their ideology appears to have been trade identification. When the interests of their trade conflicted with the larger interests of their class or sex, the needs of the craft often came first.