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

by Nancy Isenberg

Throughout its history, the United States has always had a class system. It is not only directed by the top 1 percent and supported by a contented middle class. We can no longer ignore the stagnant, expendable bottom layers of society in explaining the national identity. The poor, the waste,

For much of American history, the worst classes were seen as extrusions of the worst land: scrubby, barren, and swampy wasteland.

(1) crude habitations; (2) boastful vocabulary; (3) distrust of civilization and city folk; (4) an instinctive love of liberty (read:

licentiousness); and (5) degenerate patterns of breeding.

“I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

She rejected the idea that anyone could escape the cycle of poverty—not if it meant leaving one’s “homeland,” “family,” and “roots.” The tribal nature of poor whites was their strength. The sense of place and of land was their only ballast.

No matter “how smart you are, how hard you work,” you will be “put in your place.”

Clinton had overreached. He was “our first black president,” Morrison mused. The “tropes of blackness” were apparent in his upbringing in a single-parent and poor household, and in his working-class ways, his saxophone playing and love for junk food.