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

Written by Cedric De Leon

Narrated by Kirsten Potter

The New York Times bestseller
A New York Times Notable and Critics’ Top Book of 2016
Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction
One of NPR's 10 Best Books Of 2016 Faced Tough Topics Head On
NPR's Book Concierge Guide To 2016’s Great Reads
San Francisco Chronicle's Best of 2016: 100 recommended books
A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2016
Globe & Mail 100 Best of 2016

“Formidable and truth-dealing . . . necessary.” —The New York Times

“This eye-opening investigation into our country’s entrenched social hierarchy is acutely relevant.” —O Magazine

In her groundbreaking  bestselling history of the class system in America, Nancy Isenberg upends history as we know it by taking on our comforting myths about equality and 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 who boosted Trump all the way to 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Audio
• Release date: Mar 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9780593792704

Cedric De Leon

Cedric de Leon is Professor of Sociology and Labor Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Reviews for White Trash

[tlcooper_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When I bought White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg, I thought I knew what the book would contain. I thought I understood the class history of America. Isenberg presents a history that makes so much more sense that the romanticized version of history I was taught in high school. She argues effectively for the idea that we've always had a class system in America and that we all buy into that class system even while proclaiming we are a classless society. Isenberg presents factual elements and references historical documents to support her supposition that America has always been a country with a class system. Her expansive discussion of indentured servitude and other poor people shipped to America in our early history is enlightening. She discusses how our class system affects everything from the economy to politics. I felt uncomfortable at times because I really wanted to resist parts of the book that didn't resonate with what I wanted to believe. In those cases, I needed to stop and think about my resistance to see if it was grounded in facts or in the narrative I want to believe. White Trash is an unvarnished look at how America's society developed and morphed over time leaving the question of where it goes from here...

[vwinsloe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The title of this book oversold the content. While the author began with an interesting discussion of the colonists in New England and in Jamestown, at some point the book started exclusively discussing the American south. What happened in the North was not addressed at all, so I found the book very disappointing in this regard.

[davisfamily-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book really made me think about race and class. While I always knew that the wealthy used ways to repress the poor I never actually stopped to think about the history of class. Redirecting anger from wealth and privilege to race, false enemies and economic promises never kept. I especially appreciated the extensive bibliography in the back, I had to stop and fact check a few times, but the author was right on every account.
A learning experience that I enjoyed.

[williammelden · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Nancy Isenberg's "White Trash" is an outstanding, albeit depressing, example of the low standards which have become the rule in contemporary popular sociology. In a mere (?) 480 pages, she manages to perpetuate blatant racism; to administer urgent care on the never-quite-dead Marxist mythos of class warfare; and to demonstrate an inability to correctly (or even coherently) interpret historical trends. In a word, the book is a mess. To be fair, however, it is not entirely without value.

First, the racism. No less an authority than Wikipedia (which, sadly, is becoming the go-to "encyclopedia" for millennials and those of their elders who are too lazy to do proper research) immediately and unequivocally identifies "white trash" as an inescapably racist term, and clearly explains why this is so. Isenberg also uses the term "cracker" freely throughout her book, although she certainly didn't invent the term: it was in use in Elizabethan times, and Webster's unsurpassed 1828 dictionary defines a "cracker" as "a noisy boasting fellow." (Of course, by this definition, there are Asian and African "crackers" too, but that's not the contemporary usage. We all know who employs the term, although it's not particularly hurtful.) Isenberg's comfort with the word raises an interesting question: Would she write a volume of African-American history and call it "Nigger?" I think not; but in 1964, the "militant" comedian Dick Gregory published an autobiography with exactly that title. Times change, and I doubt that this would be permissible today. The point is that Isenberg, like so many "scholars," is inconsistent and a hypocrite. Nothing new about that. . . .

As for class warfare (a concept popularized, though not invented, by Marx and Engels), Isenberg takes it as an article of faith: citing pejorative references to the poor and uneducated of society by Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and many others, class distinctions and conflicts are the very heart of the book. Isenberg is certainly no Marxist (his name doesn't even appear in the index), but like most 20th and 21st century "scholars," she has adopted some of his concepts unashamedly. Fair enough: even Marx was right some of the time. But "class warfare" is hogwash.

Isenberg's book is written for a popular audience, and is very readable; and, in fairness, she does not claim to be among the great historians. She peppers the work (predictably) with references to such "trash" people as Andrew Jackson, Elvis Presley, Bill Clinton, Dolly Parton, Jimmy Carter, and the other "usual suspects." She discusses Sarah Palin, of course, but to her credit, she does not snicker or sneer at any of these people. She simply uses them as examples of the typical American: i.e., trash. Written in early 2016, she only makes two passing references to Donald Trump; had she waited a year, I'm sure he would have rated an entire chapter.

Isenberg's book, however, is important and valuable for one very significant reason. My fellow Christians, and the conservatives with whom I frequently consort, constantly assert that America is "a Christian nation," founded by earnest pilgrims seeking nothing more than religious freedom. That is simply not true. As she demonstrates, America — exactly like Australia — was founded and regarded as a trash-bin for the lame, the halt, the perverted dregs of British society. It was one of Great Britain's wastebaskets. Yes indeed, there were Christian pilgrims, and they were indeed fleeing the Catholic and Calvinist tyrannies of Europe; but they were not the "founders" of America. The men (and women) who created this nation were, in the main, hard-nosed, secular deists, with a few atheists and Christians thrown into the mix. And the American "revolution" was not achieved by the common man, the average farmer or shopkeeper; the vast majority of "Americans" were loyal to Great Britain. Isenberg doesn't discuss this loyalty, but she gives the lie to the myth of America's "Christian founders."

A mildly interesting book, but not recommended.

[burritapal · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I learned a new term: "offscourings," ie feces, is the perfect word for the 1% leeches of our crapitalistic society."

Usufruct=the right to enjoy the use and advantages of another's property short of the destruction or waste of its substance.

This book teaches me useful terms. Property-holders are "usufructors" because they enjoy the use of property that belongs to others ie native Americans.

I am certainly learning how people could have actually voted for Drumpf. "Our" country is made from Capitalists and ignorant squatters. Dismal.

This book is so good yet so infuriating; if I had high blood pressure, I would've surely had a stroke while reading it. This country was begun with England kicking out its homeless population and sending them to this part of the world, without asking permission of the humans already living here. Alongside them come the capitalists, seeing a way to keep their stolen riches by selling land that never belonged to them, and bringing the kidnapped Africans and West Indians, to labor for them for free, and make them even more obscenely rich. There was never an "American Dream" for the humans kept outside the 1%; every aspect of their lives would be stacked against them. Meanwhile, the"haves" would always demonize the poor, saying their poverty was caused by their own laziness. I'm just more furious than ever. Karma, must you work so slowly?


[Anderolatz · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very interesting essay that addresses the American class system, a taboo subject there, where the discourse of a superior society has been imposed. However, the combination of racism, poverty, and envy explains the motivations of certain populations to vote for populism. (Translated from Spanish)

[steve02476 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Some good history of poor people in America (concentrating on poor whites) but the first and last chapters were putrid with lefty post-modernism. Some of that was in the rest of the book as well, but it didn't overwhelm the interesting and not frequently told history.

[write5review · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mythbuster

We Americans hold many beliefs about our nation, most of which fall under the rubric of American Exceptionalism. Prime among these are that we live in a classless society, where equality reigns supreme, where everybody shares the same opportunity to strike it rich, where even if our relations with others aren’t perfect we take pride in at least trying. So, when a historian comes along to reveal the very foundations of these shared ideas as myth by baring the harsher realities of American life, resistance, objection, and even vilification should not surprise anybody.

Isenberg’s new cultural history stands out because she details how class transported over on the boats that delivered the first colonists to American shores, how it rooted firmly in American soil both in northern and southern colonies from the beginning, how it influenced the Founding Fathers and then subsequent generations, and how it morphed in the 19th and 20th centuries into what we have still today. We like to think that we left the aristocracies and class divisions of the Old World behind us, that our revolution was more about freedom for all than freedom for a few well-off, but, of course, when we dispel the fog of myth, we know that isn’t true.

Some highlights include the Founding Fathers’ views, among them Franklin and Jefferson, and how the limitless West served to siphon off what were known as waste people and the early ideas of breeding better people (the early version of Eugenics that formed as an idea in the 19th century and crystallized in early 20th-century America, well covered by Isenberg). If you have ever puzzled over why a poor and pretty much disenfranchised poor white population would rally to the cause of a minority pack of Southern land- and slaveholders, then you’ll find Isenberg’s dredging up of the Confederate use of class warfare interesting and satisfying. Too, directly related to this is the North’s psychological warfare that exploited class divisions in the South.

The roots and early permutations of class take up a bit more than half of the text and the balance moves through the 20th-century to current times, covering the earlier mentioned Eugenics movement, the New Deal, segregation, the War on Poverty, and finally exploitation of white trash as an entertainment phenomenon, not so much a legitimizing makeover but more a way for many to sneer and feel superior. In that list of topics, the New Deal and the War on Poverty, while imperfect, demonstrate that we can to some extent achieve what we claim to represent and aspire to, that is, a bit more leveling of opportunity and class.

Isenberg’s Introduction explains what you’ll find in the text and her Epilogue presents her conclusions. From the both sections, there are theses, which as many will accept as truth as will find them abhorrent. Nonetheless, they forewarn you about what to expect:

Introduction: “At all times, white trash remind us of one of the American nation’s uncomfortable truths: the poor are always with us. A preoccupation with penalizing poor whites reveals an uneasy tension between what Americans are taught to think the country promises—the dream of upward mobility—and the less appealing truth that class barriers almost invariably make that dream unobtainable. Of course, the intersection of race and class remains an undeniable part of the overall story.”

Epilogue: “Without a visible hand, markets did not at any time, and do not now, magically pave the way for the most talented to be rewarded; the well connected were and are preferentially treated.” (You might want to read that again against what we experienced in 2008 and what we may face in the coming years.)

The work reflects a great deal of scholarship, especially primary, as a reading of the footnotes demonstrate, though a bibliography would be appreciated. Contains a good index that makes looking up specific historical persons, of whom there are many, easy.

[reader1009-863136 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

nonfiction (sociology)--scholarly look at how impoverished whites have lived and have been portrayed throughout American history. I couldn't get through it as an ebook/egalley and there is still a long waiting list for this hard cover copy at my library, so I skipped to the last half (covering the 1940s to present day) which was somewhat enlightening but not that readable as nonfiction goes--a book that is probably much better read and absorbed slowly over months rather than rushed.

[wishanem · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A history of the politics of low class white people in the United States. I learned a lot while still being entertained, especially about the political campaigning and stereotypes of the 1700's and 1800's.

[over.the.edge · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was uncomfortable to read. But so necessary , and revealing, in these times, where division and hate-mongering are considered political leverage, and the class divide is getting more wide, every year.
Isenberg gives examples of how TV programs stereotype class, race, and cultural icons, as well as President's; and how they weave a story of oppression and class division, that has always existed. Using slurs, such as Half-Breed, Clay-Eaters, Poltroons and Mudsills, it is explained how the Confederate ideology converted the civil war into class war, where hierarchy was rooted in land ownership, and the ownership of slaves. The more land and slaves, the more successful you were. Reference to race and class, and the names used to refer to them, were usually used to denigrate economic "inferiors".
Ms. Isenberg discusses the use of stigmatizing "poor" people by questioning a persons racial identity and authenticity, ( "purity"). Thomas Jefferson's belief in slave trade, Jackson's instituting a squatters rights bill, all helped formulate the opinion of poor white folk as lazy squatters....white trash were people living off the government. Theodore Roosevelt favored the eugenics movement, for example. He believed in targeting certain classes of people for sterilization, to keep control of the the population of "inferior" races.The roots of economic and racial inequality lie entwined within our countries foundations.

[streamsong_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was one of the selections that appeared on a list of books that was supposed to help explain why Trump won the election in 2016.

It has taken me this long to start it – and according to Good Reads where I keep track of when I started and finished a book, it took me from June 22 thru Sept 15 to read.

It’s not an easy or comfortable read. But it did take me through a lot of history that I was not familiar with – and the bottom line is that the US has never been the classless meritocracy many would have you believe it to be.

The most poverty-stricken classes have endured a variety of abuse and scape-goating and often are prohibited from accessing the opportunities to improve their situations.

Do I understand the election of Donald Trump? No. But I more understand the anger of stigmatized people.

A few quotes from the book to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same:

“But the message of Jackson’s presidency was not about equality so much as a new style of aggressive expansion. In 1818, General Andrew Jackson invaded Florida without presidential approval; as president, he supported the forced removal of the Cherokees from the southeastern states and willfully ignored the opinion of the Supreme Court. Taking and clearing the land, using violent means if necessary, and acting without legal authority, Jackson was arguably the political heir of the cracker and squatter.” P 113
***
“The Depression revealed that liberty for some – for the select, the privileged – was not liberty for all. In a remarkable article of 1933, titled “The New Deal and the Constitution”, a popular writer named John Corbin questioned the claims of Americans to an exclusive quality of freedom He posed a rhetorical question: “Can a nation call itself free if it finds itself periodically on the verge of bankruptcy and starvation in the face of the fact that it possesses all the materials of the good life?” He meant that freedom was compromised when a nation allowed the majority of its people to suffer devastating poverty and enduring economic insecurity. Regulation regional planning, and readjustment (the last a favorite New Deal term) were beeded to correct market abuses, control the exploitation of natural resources, and adjust class imbalance, and to do so in President Roosevelt's phrase, “not to destroy individualism but to protect it.” P 216

[ffortsa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm not sure listening is the best way to deal with this book. In the same vein as These Truths, Isenberg exposes the beginnings of this country as extremely class-conscious, in spite of rhetoric that would make us think otherwise. By the 1830s and 1840s, the distinction was no longer based on color, but also on a perceived lack of value of poor and landless people otherwise classified as 'white'. I'm up to the inclusion of Texas and the development of California, where the hidalgo level of society was accepted as Spanish (European) and everyone else was relegated to a level of society dictated by their degree of mixed blood.

The intensity of this scrutiny is depressing, as is the general tone of the Age of Jackson, so much like our age today. No wonder Trump has a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office - they are much the same in their attitudes toward power, their declared prejudices, and their disregard for those they consider beneath them.

There's a lot more to go, of course. I wish I had the text, for there were a few phrases I would have liked to quote here. I have reached the era of bloodlines, for people as well as horses, and it was explicit. What is wrong with people?

The good news(?) is that Isenberg is passionate about calling it as the evidence sees it, willing to explode any and all myths and heros of our past, right up to the most recent. Her detailed descriptions of how people justified class distinctions, especially against the 'white trash', are harrowing in their folly, and the mistreatment of the poor is heartbreaking.

But I did also detect a bit of private prejudice toward the end, as she describes the 'white trash' emergence in such entertainments as Nascar racing. Elvis, and TV comedies, even as she describes how proper schooling, nutrition and other useful supports are denied the people she otherwise champions.

The last part of her book, so close to our own time, is most chilling, as she exposes the ambivalences and prejudices of even the best of our leaders, and the follies of the worst of them. I"m sure her views would continue with our current governments, state and federal.

It was hard to listen to this book, partly because she repeats stories and quotes in different parts of the book. It would be easier to skip the repetitions on the page than on the recording. But overall, this book smashes a lot of icons that need smashing and suggests a change in perspective when we think about class, cycles of poverty, and prejudice. I think this book exposed at least as much of my white privilege as any book of racial injustice has done, and given some of my family tree, I should not have been so shaken.

[donnarowe-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Excellent, detailed history of class in the South, but imbalanced due to lesser focus on the North. She doesn't mention the union movement or white immigrants of the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Eye-opening insight into the attitudes of the upper and middle classes towards the lower classes, but could have used more insight from the poor themselves.

I listened to this on audiobook. Kirsten Potter, the narrator, does an excellent job.

[crazybatcow · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It was kinda a rehash of other stuff I have read on the same topic. Kinda sheds a bit of light on some underpinnings of racial inequities, even though this book is about money... or the fantasy that the rich hold out for "everyone". Key word here is fantasy. Only the rich get rich and that includes almost exclusively, white males.

[etxgardener · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While well researched and extremely readable, this book was something of a disappointment because it did not give the reader any solution to the vast population of ignorant people that seem to inhabit our country. The fact that they have been here for 400 years is cold comfort to this reader.

[bravekelso · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Suprelative. A coherent critique of the American pretense that America, having liberated itself from royalty and aristocracy in 1776, rid itself of oligarchy and racism. Also a defence of equality and democracy, and the rights of the "common' person in an era of elitist "meritocracy".

[addunn3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Is the US a "classless society? This book explores the concepts of class and how politics and culture shape views of members of society, especially the poor. Very interesting read.

[delphimo_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

What an interesting book about the history of class in America, and to learn the founding fathers who absolute snobs. In the land of equality, the poor still suffer a meagre existence and have little hope of advancement. Isenberg covered each and every president and the discussion that not many presidents rose from rags to riches. Andrew Jackson and his wife Rachel remain the ultimate "trash" in regard to prior presidents throughout the roster of American leaders. I had not known that America had such an extreme class structure in the early history, as I thought that all citizens struggled to survive and find freedom in this New World

[startwithgivens · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I'm just frustrated with this book. I thought it was good, and then I thought it was bad, and then I thought for sure it was going to end on a high note and the author lost me. I think what bothered me the most, was that while trying to be objective I think the author also defends people that I disagree with. I also didn't feel like this book was about financial or social class necessarily, as much as it was about the opinions that are harbored for or against someone with a certain geographical background. The reason for my two star review was that I do not feel like I would ever recommend this book. While this book is undoubtedly ground breaking, and I don't discount that it should be hailed, it was not my cup of tea.

[baochuan-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The authors did a thorough job of looking at the history and how we come to regard the White Trash background.

[mhanover10 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found this quite fascinating. I never really enjoyed history growing up and I think it's due to my teachers not making it fun and interesting. Nancy does a great job of explaining the class system in America and what the different classes mean especially white trash, redneck, and other of the "lesser" classes over the past 400 years. I really learned a lot. I also now understand why that class is fascinated with Trump and wanted him for president. He figured out what to say to them and to bring himself to their level of thinking.

[featherbear · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Started but barely got anywhere reading someone else’s copy when out of town. Didn’t seem to be good enough to own – turned out this was probably correct – checked out from the downtown library. With a return date, good incentive to finish – too many unfinished titles lying around. Start off 2018 turn over a new leaf maybe -- & finished in a couple of days!

Con: the coverage of the late 20th – to present (2015 in this case) reads more like a blog mash-up. Banal academic processing of pop culture. Odd she overlooked Arthur Penn’s film Bonnie & Clyde, a more sympathetic and complex take on depression WT/hillbillies rather than a sitting target like To Kill a Mockingbird. Isenberg sometimes appears to be affected by anachronistic gotcha presentism when interpreting American intellectual and cultural history, a little reminiscent of social media & blogs. Her intended audience sometimes appears to be naïve undergraduate students; many of the “untold” “aha” moments are probably not all that surprising to older adult liberals. The Debbie Downer style of demythologizing strikes me as Young Adult history although she is by no means an antifa zealot.
Suspect Isenberg would be in the Bernie Sanders progressive camp. Sanders views the American idea through the prism of class, but his movement has been unable to incorporate identity-politics into his vision and most people of color didn’t get on board. What’s frustrating about Isenberg’s analysis and maybe progressivism in general is that it stages the bottom dwellers against the 1 percent, at least rhetorically, but ignores or avoids the dialectical contradictions of the class or classes in-between. By forcing white trash into the box of class, she consciously excludes the alternate formulation of white trash as a state of mind that runs through all classes that choose to identify as white. Do those who are excluded from this gated ethnic community care (or bother to analyze) whether the racist trash comes from the bottom of the class hierarchy, or the struggling middle class, or the 10 or 1 percent, when they are on the receiving end of the garbage?

Pro. Interesting stuff through the early 20th century. I’m as ignorant as any Young Adult (I’m 68 at this writing) on many of these things. Clearly the early English settlement of North America can be seen as a means of dealing with an exploding population, leading to a burgeoning lower class that did not have a place in a growing economy. Given the times, it doesn’t seem all that surprising that the options would be financial speculation and indentured slavery. Isenberg does not provide a political or economic alternative to a largely feudal political and economic system trying to cope with overpopulation during a plague hiatus. She does not address to my satisfaction the cultural differences between the New England and Virginia settlers in seeing or not seeing the need for labor and planning in a new and potentially lethal environment, creating different white labor behavioral cultures in the South and New England and resulting in different perceptions of African and Native American slavery. Does she underplay the impact of religion?
She devotes a chapter to Ben Franklin’s ideology of the self-made man. It is an unsympathetic portrait of the New England petit-bourgeois. Characteristic of the type is a disdain for the bottom of the white hierarchy, introducing the concept of breeding that recurs in the early 20th century fascination with eugenics and Social Darwinism. She makes much of this, downplaying his championship of education, his strong interest in the international scene, and the broad middle of the social hierarchy. The ill-use of the self-made man trope nowadays perhaps causes Isenberg to be a little presentistic in viewing Franklin, undervaluing the positive aspects I’ve listed. In particular, Franklin’s internationalist interests – hard to separate from a broad liberal education -- could well have made a white trash hero like Lyndon Johnson a stronger and more successful president.

The case against slavery or slavery by other means recurs throughout Isenberg’s intellectual history. She focuses on the administration and ideas of James Oglethorpe in the early years of the Georgia settlement, and the better-known Thomas Jefferson. Both attack slavery from the inside and for the benefit of the Anglo-Saxon whites as a whole, not primarily for any strong sense of moral rectitude with regard to the enslaved ethnic groups. Their concern is how slavery demoralizes the work ethic of lower class whites, the main population of the white settlers in North America. In some ways Jefferson’s situation is most interesting since his fellow plantation owners probably see that demoralization as a positive for ensuring that the lower and middle classes don’t try to rise above their stations, and, as Isenberg repeatedly points out, as a means of controlling ethnic slaves and using the white masses to spearhead the ethnic cleansing, best personified at the highest level by Andrew Jackson and his populist presidency of the little (white) guy. Despite being a plantation and slave owner, Jefferson envisioned a pastoral future of small white freeholder farms; a progressive back to the land ideologue, perfectly capturing the contradictions of that recurring American dream. Against the wishes of the white settlers of Georgia, Oglethorpe largely resisted slavery because he believed they were more likely to become capable freeholders without the crutch of slavery, and because small slaveholders would eventually be bought out for the benefit of speculators, who would consolidate their slaveholdings into large plantation properties and would of course give the small landholders the boot. If there are any partial heroes in Isenberg’s history, they are not benign idealists like Jefferson, but unsung and stubborn government bureaucrats like Oglethorpe and later Rexford Tugwell during the New Deal days who were capable of seeing the big picture.

In any case, the Southern power structure did not embrace the visions of either Oglethorpe or Jefferson and in fact thoroughly carried out what those prophets in the wilderness warned would happen: manipulating the white lower class while holding it in contempt, consolidating slave holdings in single crop agriculture (with consequent environmental devastation), and deluding itself with fantasies of imperialist slaveholder power that finally led the Northern industrial war machine to devastate (naturally) the white lower classes. The silver lining was that the top of the Confederate pecking order still managed to undermine Reconstruction by controlling the polls and continuing to exploit the white lower class by encouraging anti-Reconstruction violence and blaming all the nastiness on white trash. Their political stranglehold was strengthened by Social Darwinism and the acceptance of eugenics as the conventional wisdom in the early 20th century. Despite the New Deal’s rescue of the South from the environmental disaster of its one-crop economy via the TVA, the Southern power hierarchy wasn’t really dislodged. The strongest political challenge since the New Deal was launched through the passage of civil rights and voting legislation masterminded by Lyndon Johnson, the white trash master of the senate. Johnson is important for Isenberg’s thesis since he demonstrates the potential of the bottom of the white hierarchy. However, she has to acknowledge that from the class perspective he was really not at the very lowest end of the hierarchy that she seems to consider white trash proper, but part of the amorphous middle area she generally elides from analysis. And she never addresses the insularity of the lower levels of the American hierarchy that disdain the international perspective of the top tier. Relatively ignorant of foreign policy, Johnson was in a weakened leadership position. Unable to navigate confidently through the jungle of military and diplomatic advice, he lost the opportunity to avoid prolonging the war in Vietnam.

[allen.simons · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An ambitious attempt to tackle the formative story of white castoffs and how they populated the early American colonies due to the many British (and European) forces that propelled them, literally running for their lives. They became the labor force and agriculturer's of a growing new experiment. With them they brought industry and lethargy, both of which shaped the response of their elite landgrave owner/employer lords.

Coming from a family that finds its roots in the Carolinas I read her treatment of these early colonies with great interest.

[lissabeth21 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well researched and poignant exploration of who we are and who we've been since the beginning. Very interesting. Looking forward to great conversations once some of my friends have read it... hint, hint.

[bemislibrary · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The United States is a class society. Even if there are opportunities for all, there will always be those that have and those that have not. Author Isenberg supports her opinions through a series of examples, statistics, and extensive notes. Each chapter contains historical figures, lessons learned and societal impacts. There are easily recognized icons, like the Beverly Hillbillies, Elvis Presley, Dolly Patron, Tammy Faye Baker, and others, that speak to meager ultra-poor beginnings. They also bring into question the authenticity of their rise from working poor to celebrity rich. The academic approach does not encourage a robust meaningful discussion or propose genuine incentive to change.

[mitchell_bergeson_jr · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"Over time, he warned, economic benefits accrued to the stronger, shrewder people in society, and if unrestrained by government, conditions would lead to “economic autocracy” and “political despotism."

For me, this book was just ok. I enjoyed the Civil War section, but for the most part it missed the mark. With the rise of Trump, I was looking for an examination that could help explain what happened, and why such an utterly unfit person could obtain the highest job in the land. I think this book does help give some understanding for that, but it leaves me wanting more. Perhaps the "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis" book can offer more insight. I have heard that one may act as a companion piece to White Trash.

Overall, not a bad book, but a bit on the dry side, with some popular culture references that either miss the mark, or are over the reader's head.

[konastories · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Joy's review: Isenberg demonstrates that American has never been about equal opportunity by reviewing the history of how original settlers and land owners institutionalized and stigmatized the poor. She often losses her own plot by wandering off to describe in detail the plots of particular books or movies. (I really didn't need to read in detail the plot of "Deliverance"). Much tighter editing and adhering to a more clear thesis would have helped this book alot.

[nmele_4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is an important book because it examines the history of class conflict in America. Unfortunately, Isenberg focuses on invective and politicians in a narrative that jumps from one political era to another without really giving a sense of the continuity in this country's refusal to consider class differences as worthy of discussion and possible remedy. She only nods at white-black relations, and simly does not address the nativism that is once again rising around the country.

[annemichaud · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"White Trash" offers a fascinating new lens on American class history. The author presents a sort of Howard Zinn ("A People's History of the United States") reinterpretation, upending the tropes we learned in history class. I very much appreciated her analysis. The material on the eugenics movement in America was stunning to me. Nancy Isenberg drew a connecting line from colonial days, with the lower-class cast-off indentured servants sent from England, through to Elvis Presley and Bill Clinton. I still believe there is more work to do in understanding these various threads of the "American spirit," as Isenberg calls it. The reading is slow at points. All in all, though, a good addition to our understanding of the origins of class in America.