White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

I gave this book five stars, which according to the website means, "I love it." I did not love it. In fact, I disliked the book in many ways. At the same time, I could not put it down. As a career military person, I had always regarded myself as mostly conservative (even while attending UC Berkeley in the 1970's). I retired from the military around the turn of the century (or millennium, whichever you prefer), and, at around 45 years old, started attempting to live an "examined life." I stopped regarding myself as a "non-partizan conservative," and felt that I was more of a "traditional semi-progressive." If that sounds stupid and naive, that is because I was stupid and naive. I was a middle-aged white man who thought that racism was behind us (except for some tiny lunatic fringe in some "Dogpatch" ultra-rural area). I also believed, buckle and thong, in our judicial system, and truly believed that a black man could get as fair a trial as a white man throughout the United States.In the last two years of turmoil, I started reading more news online than just the BBC. I discovered Slate and The Economist, and my world view started changing. I ran across a review of this book on Slate.com. I bought it on Amazon. I started reading it early last summer, and couldn't put it down. It is meticulously researched and extremely well-written. I hated it, mainly because of how stupid it told me I was, but also for how it made me almost physically ill about how people, especially those in power with vested interests, think about and manipulate others, and about how the manipulated people are brought to commit heinous acts that are ultimately against their own interests.During a week surveying railroad in the Mojave Desert, I finished the book and then read it again. It made me understand a lot of things that seemed kind of muddled before, like what my black friends in the military had told me, and where some of the redneck adults from my lower middle class childhood were coming from, and also what a lot of "trouble-making activists" from the 1960's to now were really saying.While definitely lower middle class on the economic scale, my family has always put huge stock in reading and education. We were raised to never look down on others for their social and economic status. I was taught to look down upon self-proclaimed "elites", and yet to have tastes and education that were usually available only to elites. I later learned that "elites" is a term with a lot of vagueness about it. Academics and elites are definitely two different things, culturally, socially, and economically. Culturally, most "elites" wouldn't know Anatole France from the Tour de France, if they had, in fact, heard of either. Having a college degree (and I DO NOT disparage the accomplishment) does not confer upon the graduate any real claim to academia or even literacy. Often, it seems to be a hurdle that has to be taken and suffered due to family expectations. As a former military officer, I knew fellow officers who were college graduates who were yet barely literate. However unbelievably ignorant they were, they were acceptable, having come from the "right" background.Thanks to Nancy Isenberg's book, my seventh decade (I recently turned 60) has become far more complex for me. While having been taught NOT to ever despise people of lower social/economic standing, I have to despise many of their prejudices and beliefs. While disliking elites and elitism, I find that many of them share beliefs and tastes with me (although definitely not most of them). Trying (and hopefully achieving at least a fraction) to live an "examined life" has been far more difficult after reading Ms. Isenberg's words. To say the least, learning that Locke was a major shareholder in a slave trade company makes for a certain piquancy while reading his philosophy. My semi-retired life might have been emotionally easier had I not read her book, but I will always be grateful (however annoyed) that I'm less of a stooge of politically acceptable history (not to be confused with the partizan/political battle cry of "politically correct"). In this case, "correct" and truth are two very different things. Thanks, Nancy, for bringing me the truth.

White Trash begins with good research exploring the interplay of class and power in Great Britain during the colonial era, in which the poor and destitute were considered to be surplus people. The question then was what to do with the "refuse," the landless people wandering the countryside, crowding the growing slums and filling the pauper's prisons. The British North American colonies were viewed as a dumping ground for these unwanted people and they were shipped over to fill the need for cheap, unskilled labor.Because of the legal restrictions on land ownership, the lack of educational resources and few economic opportunities, these people were kept at the bottom rung of the class ladder for centuries.White Trash explores the post American Revolution era and the 19th century with a broad overview and is a good intro to that period of American history. However, in this reader's opinion, the 20th century is not as well handled and the post WWII era reads more like opinion pieces than well researched social and economic history.The first half of the book I would give 5 stars, and the second half 3 stars, yielding my 4 star rating. The book is definitely worth reading, especially for the colonial and Federal era information, and the bibliography is valuable for further research.Finally, I would read this book before reading"Hillbilly Elegy"by J.D. Vance. "White Trash" provides insights into the cultural and class barriers erected by the dominant society and into the seemingly intractable cultural mores that keep poor whites poor.

White Trash is an excellent but troubling book, and in reading it, I experienced the seven stages of grief. More about that later.This timely, well-researched work destroys the hollow myth of American exceptionalism and replaces it with a convincing claim that America was founded on an invisible, unspoken but very real class system that immediately disenfranchised the majority of colonists and has been carried forward without change to present day. Far from a rag tag band of plucky, self-starting people seeking independence, most of the early new Americans, it seems, were desperately poor, scared and hungry, and their shoddy labor — indentured servitude — was seen as an unfortunate necessity by the wealthy elite who used land speculation to enrich themselves on the backs of the working poor.That model was amplified and deeply entrenched in South by the horrors of slavery. The lasting damage from that sustained cruelty and barbarity on the victims is well documented, and inexcusable. Along with the (hopefully) obvious direct harm to those enslaved, the author argues there was an insidious and perverse indirect effect: poor southerners simply could not compete against the “free” labor of the brutally enslaved. And yet, though mired in the most damaging kind of poverty — unable to work, unable to feed their families, sickened by disease and with no hope for the future — these disenfranchised southerners thought of themselves as superior to an entire race in chains. That sick trick, that racist sleight of hand, at least partially explains, why so many were willing to fight and die in the Civil War to protect a system that didn’t serve them at all.It created a bitter foundation of racial hatred conjoined with economic despair that exists today in the perverse pride some of the most disenfranchised in our country take in voting against their own interests, ensuring their own poverty deepens, wages drop, access to education slips away (indeed, is viewed suspiciously), healthcare grows increasingly out of reach, nutrition worsens and jobs are shipped overseas by companies that are never held accountable.Clearly, the effects of this dysfunctional founding myth are still felt today because we refuse to examine our origins, clinging instead to the notion that self-sufficiency can lift us out of our paralysis. It didn’t then and it doesn’t now, but the misguided belief that we can move into the upper echelons of a system that actively denies entrance — in other words, lying to ourselves — has come to typify the American experience.It is a difficult read and, as I said, moved me through the seven classic stages of grief:· shock — that our founding myth could be so skewed· denial — that we’re still facing many of the same issues today as 200-plus years ago· bargaining — ok, it’s disheartening, but if we could just put our phones down and our anger aside and pay attention to each other, and listen, maybe we could move forward…· guilt — that I may be complicit in propping up an economic class system that locks so many people out· anger — that so many are still so willing to blame their plight on neighbors or on “the government” rather than the economic system that we have allowed to grow unchecked to benefit the few· depression — that human nature, as evidenced by repeating our history over and over, and our need to keep someone below us mean nothing may ever change· hope — actually, I never got to this stageI’ve seen some pretty harsh reactions to this book, many from those who may have judged it by its title and topic alone, but with generations of white trash sharecropper blood in my veins, I found it rang with a deep truth that requires — demands — our collective attention.It’s on all of us, because in the end “…the most powerful engines of the U.S. economy — slave owning planters and land speculators in the past, banks, tax policy, corporate giants and compassionless politicians and angry voters today — bear some responsibility for the lasting effect on white trash.” And, I might add, for the lasting effect on every socioeconomically disadvantaged segment of our country.I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

For those interested ina America history and socio-economic dynamics an interesting read

An outstanding historical narrative chronicling the trials and tribulations of the marginalised poor whites in the US. It debunks cherished egalitarian myths of equal opportunities and levelling up, and reveals the long standing contempt and scornful attitudes, expressed by the political and intellectual elites towards the white underclass.The book traces the origins of these attitudes in Elizabethan England that faced the problems of a rapidly growing indigent idle population, drifting into the towns begging, thieving and threatening the stability of a stratified order. The primary impetus for the colonisation of North America was to rid the old country of the rabble, by shipping a vast number of poor who were forced to labour in newly established plantation colonies for the profit of the mercantile aristocracy, as had happened in Ireland. It was hoped in the process to acquire a share of the tantalising wealth of the New World exploited by the Spaniards, and undermine the hated Spanish Empire by impeding its Northern penetration into the new Continent. Although the founders’ motives of the different colonies were at some variance about land distribution for the lower classes, most of the original settlements struggled to thrive or survive in the new challenging environment because of a lack of skilled manpower. This was compounded by the demotivation of indentured labour, a system that duplicated an archaic feudal society. To compensate for the unreliability of an intractable idle labour force, as in Spanish colonies, African slavery was introduced . In its early days white servants worked side by side with black slaves and there was more fluidity in social intercourse as they fraternised and and often cooperated in resisting their masters by running away together. Legislation was implemented in order to create fixed boundaries between the poor landless whites and the black slaves, thus sowing the seeds of Racism that has tainted the fabric of American society ever since. The author emphasised that “Land was the principle source of wealth and the true measure of liberty and civic worth” Land grants and land titles created a privileged class of slave holders particularly in the tobacco and cotton growing colonies of the South. The poor whites were either destitute squatters struggling with disease and malnutrition or poor tenants eking meagre livelihood on marginal unproductive land. They were frequently disenfranchised or their voting rights severely curtailed by property qualifications. The gap continued to widen with every generation with no guarantee of social mobility. Slavery hindered economic progress for the landless white by encouraging idleness, scavenging and begging. This situation remained one of the main drivers of American history leading to the Civil War , but also to the recurrent immigration waves opening up the continent interior to the poor landless masses. It led later to the New Deal following the Great Depression, the first serious attempt to combat mass poverty and redress the wide inequalities in American society by creating greater employment opportunities and a basic welfare system. This was followed in the 1960’s by LBJohnson’s welfare programmes. An obsession with racial health and pedigree was translated into pseudoscientific eugenic preoccupations about the physical and mental degeneration, well into the second half of the 20th Century. After centuries of propagating an ideology that demonises poverty as a consequence of idleness rather than a lack of favourable circumstances, the State still remains lukewarm at addressing the wider causes of class inequalities in education, health and housing. And to this day punitive judicial and policing systems have aimed principally at controlling the poor and protecting the property owners, while the sham democratic process mobilises their votes with promises of curbing immigration or deflecting their anger unto remote Big Government.The author documents a detailed social, political and intellectual history to support her thesis. She takes us on an extraordinary journey opening up unexplored vistas in order to undermine the enduring myth of a classless American society. A highly recommended engrossing read.

Livre très intéressant pour qui s'intéresse à l'histoire américaine.

Ir you want to understand the genesis of poverty in US, this boom is a must. Do not miss the oportunity to comprenhend about this definitory subject nowadays.

Great book, With a remarkable historical and media research. I recommend for everyone interested in race and class issues in America.