The New York Times Bestseller, with a new preface from the author
"This estimable book rides into the summer doldrums like rural
electrification. . . . It deals in the truths that matter."-Dwight
Garner, The New York Times "This eye-opening investigation into our
country's entrenched social hierarchy is acutely relevant."-O, The
Oprah Magazine "White Trash will change the way we think about our
past and present." -T. J. Stiles, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
Custer's Trials In her groundbreaking bestselling history of the
class system in America, Nancy Isenberg, co-author of The Problem
of Democracy, takes on our comforting myths about equality,
uncovering the crucial legacy of the ever-present, always
embarrassing-if occasionally entertaining-poor white trash. "When
you turn an election into a three-ring circus, there's always a
chance that the dancing bear will win," says Isenberg of the
political climate surrounding Sarah Palin. And we recognize how
right she is today. Yet the voters that put Trump in the White
House have been a permanent part of our American fabric, argues
Isenberg. The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time
of the earliest British colonial settlement to today's hillbillies.
They were alternately known as "waste people," "offals," "rubbish,"
"lazy lubbers," and "crackers." By the 1850s, the downtrodden
included so-called "clay eaters" and "sandhillers," known for
prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin,
ragged clothing, and listless minds. Surveying political rhetoric
and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four
hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America's
supposedly class-free society--where liberty and hard work were
meant to ensure real social mobility. Poor whites were central to
the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century,
and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as
much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor
white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise
of eugenics--a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore
Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. These poor
were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ's Great Society; they
haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck
Dynasty. Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been at
or near the center of major political debates over the character of
the American identity. We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly
stain on our nation's history. With Isenberg's landmark book, we
will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature
of class as well.
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