Nancy Isenberg’s WHITE
TRASH –
The 400-Year Untold History
of CLASS in AMERICA
A Retrospective
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July 6, 2017
Dr. Isenberg has come in for quite a bit of abuse for writing this
book although she is not the first to make such claims.
In reading this book, it found me reflecting throughout how openly
and honestly she has presented her picture of that history, obviously knowing
full well that she would upset those on the liberal left and the conservative
right; the poor as well as the rich; those who have escaped poverty and now
live in the comfort of the assumed nouveau riche, while never
being accepted by the actual rich; those who claim some degree of upward
mobility, power and authority while denying any association with those who they
now dominate; and those who have never lost their admiration for the trappings
of English and European royalty and gentrified nobility and of inherited wealth
and station as opposed to earned wealth, power and authority as most Americans
like to think that is true of themselves.
Kevin Williamson of the National Review (August 20, 2016) writes a
blistering review of this book seeing it as “bad history,” while failing to
make the case for this charge. Instead, he punishes author Isenberg for
her poor grasp of English grammar and conceptual presentation skills.
Interestingly enough, google has deleted the most hysterical
comments on this book from its Internet pages. These detractors are
paradoxically verifying the author’s study, that is, that we are a much more
class conscious nation than we would like to admit.
My heritage is Irish, and the Irish that came to the United States
in the second quarter of the 19th century were generally seen
as “lace curtain” and “shanty” Irish with a disproportionate of the latter
category coming in the greatest numbers as Ireland was suffering a potato
famine and the "shanty" Irish came to America feeling they had no
other recourse to survive.
Not being an historian and reading history eclectically, I found
myself however quite familiar with the profiles of our Founding Fathers and
leading lights down through the last 200 years as I am interested in biography,
especially of those who have assumed leadership roles as I am an industrial and
organization psychologist, which makes it part of my turf.
Most of us have no trouble learning that the dregs of Great
Britain were dumped off in Australia in the 18th and 19th century,
but we don’t like to think that was also true of the esteemed Pilgrims or other
people of the 17th and 18th and 19th century
who found their way to America, yet as Isenberg shows it was also true of these
immigrants to the new land.
These people identified as wastrels, over time, have become known
as Offscourings, Lubbers, Bogtrotters, Rascals, Rubbish, Squatters, Crackers,
Clay-eaters, Tackies, Mudsills, Scalawags, Briar hoppers, Hillbillies,
Low-downer, White niggers, Degenerates, White trash, Rednecks, Trailer trash,
and Swamp people.
Isenberg takes pains to show the origin of these sobriquets
explaining them in some detail.
The author profiles Benjamin Franklin, clearly an autodidact, John
Adams, Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington showing them,
among others, on how they managed their image of class with due diligence and
conscious zeal.
“Plain” John Adams is, however, contrasted with the slippery side
of his family in cousin Samuel Adams who insisted on being chauffeured in a
fancy carriage when he attended the Continental Congress.
The antebellum South comes in for microscopic perusal mainly
because of the aristocratic class of southern plantation owners and Negro
slavery, but also for the pervasive presence of the class of “White trash” that
in many ways was more encased in poverty and pain, illiteracy and inbreeding,
imbecility and disease.
The fact that we still have what the author calls “white niggers”
in Kentucky and Appalachia as well as hovels throughout the country to this day
speaks to a class President’s Johnson’s “War on Poverty” was unable to defeat.
It may surprise the reader after reading the first one hundred
pages, which provides the foundation of the narrative, that such lights as
Franklin and Jefferson preferred to see themselves as a “new breed” and
separate from the “rubbish,” Jefferson’s word for those of us who have risen
out of the misbegotten.
Their kindness was not necessarily always in evidence, as it is
not always shown today by the majority of us. We expect people to be able
to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and find their way to a fulfilling life
and economic comfort however unrealistic that is.
Perhaps the most disturbing part of the book was that on eugenics
where many in power including Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes were
for forced sterilization of those labeled feebleminded.
Those who read me know that I have a special place in my heart for
Andrew Jackson, the personification of the cracker, uneducated, uncouth,
brawler, not a reflective or cognitive minded man, but nonetheless leader
during an important moment in American history, and without that moment, well,
chances are we would not be the United States of America we are today.
Jackson was the first western elected president from the land of
squatters and thieves, landless people who lived in squalor and wouldn’t know a
grammatical sentence if it penetrated their ear. Like Donald J.
Trump of the 21st century, Jackson spoke their tongue and was
rallied by them to be swept into the presidency on the strength of all they
were against with little appreciation of what they were actually for.
Isenberg paints Presidents Carter and Clinton with the broad
brush of hayseed with Clinton playing the redneck for all it was worth, while
Carter behaving as if he didn’t have the taint.
One writer reflected
that Jimmy Carter would have been a much more effective president had he
embraced some of his “down country” origins that were reflected in his brother
Billy, who smoked five packs of Pall Malls a day and always had a beer in his
hand, and whose attitude was “hoo-Lord-what-the-hell-get-out-the way” compared
to his brother, Jimmy’s prudent self-righteousness.
The author sees Americans as a strange breed with a long legacy of
“white trash,” which incidentally has been my experience as
well. Lady Bird Johnson had no trouble accepting that label, admitting she came out
of this milieu as did I.
Isenberg uses an interesting approach to illustrate this "white trash" ambience, citing novels, such as the Grapes of Wrath and To Kill a Mockingbird;
television dramas, such as the Andy Griffin Show, Green Acres, Gomer Pyle,
Petticoat Junction and The Beverly Hillbillies; celebrity personalities such as
Elvis, Minnie Pearl, Duck Dynasty, Dolly Parton and Faye Bakker; politicians
such as Sarah Palin, Huey Long and Slick Willie Clinton and Tricky Dick Nixon; and evangelists such as Jimmy
Bakker, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.
The author concludes:
White trash is a central, if disturbing, thread in our national
narrative. The very existence of such people – both in their
visibility and invisibility – is proof that American society obsesses over the
mutable labels we give to the neighbors we wish not to notice. (We
claim) “They are not who we are.” But they are who we are
and have been a fundamental part of our history, whether we like it or not.
From my vantage point, as paradoxical as it may sound, I think
this is why we have survived as a people and as a free society. From a cultural standpoint, it finds someone such as myself able to read her book with humor and foreknowledge
that although she is right she is also wrong. Otherwise, someone
such as myself would be unable to muse over her words or write these words.
No comments:
Post a Comment