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White Trash

the 400-year Untold History of Class in America
May 15, 2017DrFolklore rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
White Trash is an excellent history of class in America, written by an academic historian. Her study focusses not on all poor people or the many immigrant groups who arrived, and who, by and large, succeeded economically, but on an old white underclass from the British Isles, a great many of whom still live in conditions that put the lie to the American Dream. In this thoroughly researched history, Isenberg shows that the earliest American colonies, Virginia and Plymouth, were founded on a class system, with the poor have limited rights and few opportunities for land ownership -- among the slaves in America's early days were numerous whites. Much of the westward push of settlers, was driven by these people looking for land, denied them by their "betters" (of course, resulting in genocidal war and land theft from the inhabitants). With copious references, Isenberg shows that in many ways, this underclass still exists near the bottom of the social order. She explains that class tension in the USA, regularly arises in the political environment. Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Bill Clinton were among the few presidents who rose from the underclass. All were divisive leaders, hated by the upper classes and popular with the lower. Many of Andrew Jackson's supporters liked this brash, outspoken backwoodsman, and loved that his spoken English was unsophisticated. Speaking of Jackson in the 1820's, Isenberg says that he was portrayed "as an outsider, a man of natural talents…, who was capable of cleaning up the corruption in Washington. His nomination provoked 'sneers of derision from the myrmidons of power at Washington,' wrote one avid Jackson man, who decried the 'degeneracy of American feeling in that city.' Jackson wasn't a government minion or a pampered courtier, and thus his unpolished and unstatesmanlike ways were an advantage' (124)." The same words could have been written two centuries later, about Donald Trump though this book was completed before his election campaign. White Trash isn't a page-turner, but is an important book for anyone interested in American culture, history or politics. Isenberg is a first-rate researcher, who has given considerable thought to her argument. She provides the evidence to allow us to follow the development of her thinking, so that we can understand how she reaches her conclusions. In so long and thorough a book, we can nitpick and find something we disagree with, but her basic point, that American (US) society always contained a despised underclass with limited opportunities, can't be refuted. The book is important to Canadians, not only in understanding our neighbour, but because we were settled under somewhat similar circumstances -- one of our first post-contact migrations was of Loyalists, refugees from the American Revolution -- and share many values with Americans. (If you don't believe that class is an issue in Canada, think of how you react to people saying either "to whom" or "Can yous come here?")