Nancy Isenberg - Summary of White Trash

Summary of

White Trash

The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

by Nancy Isenberg

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This is a summary with analysis.

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Table of Contents

White Trash by historian Nancy Isenberg is a riveting chronicle of class in America as explored through the role and the plight of the white underclass from the days of colonial settlers to the present.

Despite the founders declaration that all men are created equal, the reality of life in America has continuously told a different story. With careful research, Isenberg reviews the popular American myth of equality for all and illustrates how poor whites, or white trash, have traditionally been a much-derided, marginalized part of American society.

Class hierarchy traces back to Americas earliest history. Contrary to the myth that American colonial settlers were either enterprising businessmen or devout Christians fleeing religious persecution, the majority were actually economically challenged outcasts or social burdens that the English were happy to be rid of. Many were criminals, vagrants, and orphans who then became indentured servants with no landowning rights. Thus, from the nations beginnings as a colonial society, there arose a firmly entrenched social order in which landowners, politicians, and other well-bred families occupied a higher station than servants who had no land and therefore no power.

Throughout this 400-year history, the circumstances of poor whites have changed, but the overall disdain and prejudice against this sector of society has not. Despite gains made by Franklin Delano Roosevelts New Deal and other governmental efforts to aid the poor, many middle- and upper-class Americans are still contemptuous of this population, which is seen as a base stratum of civic life. Public figures from meager beginnings, such as Elvis Presley and President Bill Clinton, may have achieved high degrees of success and wealth, but the stigma of what it means to be white trash in America remains strong.

Nancy Isenberg is a history professor at Louisiana State University. She is the author of Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America (1998), Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (2007), and Madison and Jefferson (2010), a New York Times bestseller.

Thomas Paine (1736-1809) was an American philosopher and the author of Common Sense (1776).

Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) was president of the Confederate States of America (1862-1865). He didnt believe that whites could live in harmony with former slaves.

Richard Hakluyt (1552-1616) was an English clergyman and geographer who chronicled the lives of explorers. In 1589, he published Principal Navigations, a comprehensive compilation of all the narratives he could find of English explorations to the north, the east, and the Americas.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) was a French naturalist who wrote about America as a wasteland of degeneracy.

Jimmy Carter was the 39th president of the United States. His campaign is notable because of its conscious effort to appeal to lower-class whites.

John Adams (1735-1826) was the second president of the United States. He accepted class distinctions as outlined in a series of letters he wrote to Thomas Jefferson.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was the 16th president of the United States. He had roots in the white underclass and his adversaries dubbed him president of the mudsills.

Benjamin Franklin (1705-1790) was an American inventor, author, and politician. He was concerned with how to best create a productive society and believed that class conflicts would dissipate on their own.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was the third president of the United States. He believed in a hierarchical, agrarian society.

Davy Crockett (1786-1836) was an early American folk hero. He helped expose class discord in the backcountry.

Sarah Palin was the Republican nominee for vice president in 2008. She appealed to poor white voters, and her white trash persona was heavily scrutinized in the media.

Bill Clinton was the 42nd president of the United States. He grew up poor in rural Arkansas and had a common man appeal, like Andrew Jackson and Jimmy Carter before him.

Tammy Faye Bakker (1942-2007) was an American televangelist who, along with her husband James Bakker, was brought down by scandal. Her subsequent appearances on reality television resonated with audiences, presumably because she represented the more unseemly stereotypes of the white underclass.

1. The ideology of the American dream leads many middle-class Americans to assume that only immigrants and racial and ethnic minorities are poor in America.
2. The middle class is sheltered from the realities faced by the working and poor classes.
3. Some American colonial thinkers believed that class conflicts would work themselves out and therefore rarely mentioned problems with class divisions.
4. Racial difference is exploited to make poor whites feel superior.
5. The class system in America is tied to its earliest laws surrounding land use.
6. Accepted terms used to define white trash have been numerous, scathing, and dehumanizing.
7. The poor white class is alleged to be identified by certain physical characteristics that indicate a lower breed of person.
8. Certain politicians have presented a common man image to which lower-class white voters respond positively.
9. The eugenics movement popularized the idea of sterilizing lower classes.
10. Demeaning depictions of poor whites in popular culture perpetuate widespread bias against this underclass.
11. Government interventions to overcome prejudice and support poor whites have been historically met with backlash.

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The ideology of the American dream leads many middle-class Americans to assume that only immigrants and racial and ethnic minorities are poor in America.

Analysis

Many Americans buy into the ideology that the United States is the land of promise and opportunity, where citizens can be free from the confines of a hierarchical society. In simplistic, optimistic history books, the United States is depicted as a haven for diligent, ambitious people who can achieve wealth and status without constraints on their liberties. Yet the reality is that firmly entrenched class barriers impede upward mobility. These barriers have been intentionally reinforced by the ruling class since the nations inception.