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

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 stage I’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.

I took forever finishing White Trash, but found it engrossing at the same time. I believe that the title is unfortunate, although riveting. It is a broader story of class that just of the trash; it's the story of those who believe they should define and control class. In light of the ascendency of the the alt-right, the anti-intellectualism of parts of the electorate and the elected, and the ignoring of the poor with those class distinctions, it is a very timely book that I highly recommend. I didn't give it 5 stars because of what I found to be a few organization issues and with a title that isn't complete enough. It is a broader and deeper analysis. I would like to find more and better books of this ilk so that I understand the US electorate and political dynamic better, and how to influence it, if possible.

I was super excited about the release of this book; I've been a fan of the PBS "People Like Us" movie for a very long time. A lot of the narrative in the U.S. tends to focus on race, overlooking elements of class that exist and have some pretty strong historical roots. This is a good read, it's a great read if you're someone who is faintly familiar with ideas in sociology or in general about class struggle. It's a sociology/history book, so may not be as mainstream as people would like. What's nice is that this particular author actually articulates the ideas some have come across in sociology/history regarding class and puts those often underlying murmurs of class struggle into historical context, along with supporting ideas and accounts. It ties in some of the ideas of the Founding Fathers, especially as it pertains to Thomas Paine and variations and distinctions between the land-holding and non, as property is often tied to wealth. The author starts out in discussing the elements of Protestant Work Ethic and the reverberations of that in the U.S. The author does a great job of going through the different evolutions of the idea of "white trash" especially as it pertains to the name and variations of the name. There is also the element of how the imagery of white trash changes over the years; such as mountain folk or those in Kentucky, or those who grow corn. It's relatively an always evolving term as explained by the author. The author takes the reader through the present day, and links it back to the civil war and to the revolutionary war. All and all, a great book and a quick read that I enjoyed. This is a history narrative, meaning I don't really know where some of the reviews dog it for being "political." It takes the reader through the evolution of the term white trash, it looks at variations of white trash and how it is portrayed, how it comes to be viewed in the U.S., it's a term that has had some unique applications and has been crossed applied to various groups throughout the U.S.'s history. The citations are well done, lots of primary sources and clear links to where the author is drawing conclusions from. The author also focuses on the term in both the north and south, albeit after the Civil War it becomes more concentrated within the southern region. The author also stays pretty focused on her niche, which makes it a compact and enjoyable read.

I study cultural trends for large consumer goods companies. For corporate America one of the most important cultural trends is the growing rich-poor divide. The ranks of the poor are swelling and the reality of their lives is virtually unknown to most corporate executives. (If you read Neal Gabler’s “The Secret Shame of Middle Class Americans” in The Atlantic you’ll learn that a great many (47%) middle class Americans live more like the poor than they do upper middle class executive; American class division is much bigger than most of realize.) Nancy Isenberg’s book, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America is painstakingly researched, extensively footnoted, and still written in a way that this non-historian finds entertaining and enlightening. (The fact that some Amazon reviewers have given this book a one-star rating astounds me. The scholarship is superb with 800 footnotes if you question anything. Isenberg is presenting a timely argument and a call to consider class in America. No other book explains the history of class in America better. Her handling of the years before America’s founding, through the Civil War, and through the eugenics movement of the early 20th century is fascinating, convincing, and unmatched in the clarity with which it’s all tied together in a multi-century narrative. As she continues into the later part of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st, we see the narrative come alive as it jibes with our shared memory of pop culture personas from Elvis and Dolly Parton to Sarah Palin and Honey Boo Boo. Like all historical narratives, this one doesn’t just stop it morphs into the present. Everyday the political significance of this book continues to grow as tragic news events remind us that class and race, security and chaos, life and death undergird a reality that drives not just headlines, but actively reshapes the platforms of major American political parties. As always, but now with mounting urgency and increasing transparency, class issues are at the core of American politics. For better or worse, star ratings are important to book sales. This book is one we should all read which is why the deflating effect of reactionary and undisciplined reviewers on this site is a real travesty. Isenberg’s White Trash can help all readers understand our world a little bit better; it can make it clear that things are the way they are today due to choices made in the past. Analogously, the future will be what it will be due to choices we make today. We can all make better choices. And thankfully Isenberg has made the first step an easy one: adding White Trash to your shopping cart.

I was torn not to give this book a higher rating. Depending on the reader it could certainly deserve it. While Ms Isenberg presents considerable evidence for the argument, it's an argument I find unnecessary of making. I discovered long ago the basis and much of the supporting (similar) data in one form or another. The book seems to present it as a revelation, and it may well be to many. For me however, it became just a bit bogged down by going to great extent to reinforce that point and I didn't need to be convinced. History tends to be taught in a condensed version, due to time constraints on classrooms. As such most only ever learn the highpoints. The Washingtons, Jeffersons and Lincolns of history. We're taught the founders had lofty ideals they sought to provide all men. For most, that is the version of "history" they believe and repeat with patriotic fervor. This book can give such readers a new perspective. A reality that those historic figures were actually no different than politicians of today. The same people falling through the cracks of society today have been falling through the cracks forever, quite often not so much by accident. All the more reason to question why your leaders continue to allow such discards of society in a world of plenty. Is it merely allowed, or intended?

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.

This is not a difficult book to read, still not an easy book to process if your knowledge of the history of the US of A didn't include the information packed within the pages. A few movies have touched on the realities of Jamestown, yet in a somehow uncontexted fashion, w/o comparing what was happening elsewhere in the world, and especially not identifying the histories of the persons characterized as inhabitants. What they were up to after a short time of attempting to survive was horrific and graphic enough, I guess. So, to save faith in the USA,, one could imagine it was the tenderfoot naievete of the newcomers that gave way to the grossly acting out one's fury behaviors when not stuck in mind numbing sloth borne of falling from noble first settler to stunningly unprepared, starving and dirty depravity. Yet, while the latter was the result, the nobility of the first settlers is revealed as a bit of a myth, these folks were not middle class signer's on for the sake of religious freedom, these were "undesirables" rounded up from the backwater streets of poverty in London; poor people unable to buy their way out of the "arrest" for loitering that landed them a place on the ship headed for Jamestown. Not only were these folks completely unprepared, they'd never been even remotely highly regarded by London society only too happy to get rid of them to shores many many thousands of miles away. They'd never been educated and their more elevated skills were at taking advantage of the indifference of the wealthy: prostitution, petty thievery, sales of stolen property and more organized crimes. This information makes the challenges of surviving in a wilderness town with no wilderness skills, most likely little to no enthusiasm for a project they'd never signed up for and entirely dependent upon ships making the trip to delivery what ever supplies as could arrive after months with any nourishment left in the food stuffs or skills to cultivate any seed or livestock delivered. Kind of a major hole in the storyline about the founding of the first colony, mostly we just hear they didn't make it, not what it looked like in the years it took for the inhabitants to struggle and die, or why. What a monumental crime. Anyway, the story continues to describe the eventual theft of the land from original inhabitants of Virginia and the rest of the South and the success of the slavery system and the relative failure of the mass deportation of people's inhabiting British cities, the "white trash" of London forcibly moved to the swamps and backwaters of the South. It seems they turned to eating clay, but what ever, you get the idea. The information within this book starts with this kind of information so glaringly left out of school textbooks, even in colleges. It's horribly fascinating reading, but having to revise the facts of one's learned history of the USA is not fun. One begins to see even more deeply rooted suffering and exploitation than one might glean from a smattering of understanding of slavery's and genocide's bloody, bloody underpinnings for this country. I'm sure I'm not saying it right, so be it. The narrative continues in explicit detail right up to today on how the term came to be and stuck since so long ago, what this implies for understanding who we are as a people and what it means for what we'll need to address to move forward, in addition to the atrocities of slavery and genocide already on our plates. Good to know, ultimately though and I grateful to Nancy Isenberg for leaving no stone unturned in her research (or so it seems) and her frank delivery of what she learned. She doesn't interpret the facts, just lays them out for us to draw conclusions. So read some of this review as my newly formed opinions based on her facts. I trust her scholarship, I've read a lot of sociology and become discerning, so trust me on this, she's one of the honest ones.

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.

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.

Un trabajo cuidadosamente investigado y escrito. Interesante y útil. Hay repeticiones en el texto, y cuestiones muy conocidas tomadas "literalmente". Buen libro.

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.