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“the certitude of being herself, in whatever unfinished condition, will always be good enough.”37
senses were affronted whenever and wherever she saw the disappearance of the rules of politeness. That a depressed minimum wage keeps millions in poverty is of no concern:
It is, she insists, manners (alas, no longer practiced by one’s social inferiors) that determine the health of a civilization.
imagined reviving old-fashioned manners—as if it were possible for class identity to be hidden under a veneer of false gentility.
they would recognize that the most powerful engines of the U.S. economy—slaveowning planters and land speculators in the past, banks, tax policy, corporate giants, and compassionless politicians and angry voters today—bear considerable responsibility for the lasting effects on white trash, or on falsely labeled “black rednecks,” and on the working poor generally. The sad fact is, if we have no class analysis, then we will continue to be shocked at the numbers of waste people who inhabit what self-anointed patriots have styled the “greatest civilization in the history of the world.”
The founders insisted that the majestic continent would magically solve the demographic dilemma by reducing overpopulation and flattening out the class structure.
In addition to this environmental solution, a larger, extremely useful myth arose: that America gave a voice to all of its people, that every citizen could exercise genuine influence over the government.
replicate class station through marriage, kinship, pedigree, and lineage.
Power (whether social, economic, or merely symbolic) is rarely probed.
women, and the poor in myriad ways.
Disguising that fact is the real camouflage that distorts the actual class nature of state power.
Personal connections, favoritism, and trading on class-based knowledge still grease the wheels that power social mobility in today’s professional and business worlds.
Blaming nature for intractable breeds was just a way to rationalize indifference.
In 2009, the 1 percent paid 5.2 percent of their income in state and local taxes, while the poorest 20 percent paid 10.9 percent. States penalized the poor with impunity.
We see how inherited wealth grants status without any guarantee of merit or talent.
While it is not discussed very often, our society still measures human worth by the value of the land people occupy and own.
On average, Americans pass on 50 percent of their wealth to their children; in Nordic countries, social mobility is much higher; parents in Denmark give 15 percent of their total wealth to their children, and in Sweden parents give 27 percent. Class wealth and privileges are a more important inheritance (as a measure of potential) than actual genetic traits.3
Waste people. Offscourings. Lubbers. Bogtrotters. Rascals. Rubbish. Squatters. Crackers. Clay-eaters. Tackies. Mudsills. Scalawags. Briar hoppers. Hillbillies. Low-downers. White niggers. Degenerates. White trash. Rednecks. Trailer trash. Swamp people.
We are, then, not only preoccupied with race, as we know we are, but with good and bad breeds as well.
disconnect between image and reality.
