White Trash

Nancy Isenberg. White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. New York: Viking, 2016.

Isenberg holds that Americans have long been in denial about the degree about class--it's role in American history, it's deep roots in early English colonization, and even the very fact of it's existence. This book serves, then, as an implicit critique of American exceptionalism. By the end, she wants the reader to be completely disabused of any lingering doubts that the United States has been, and remains, a society deeply stratified by class, and possessing a sizable white underclass that, to paraphrase Jesus of Nazareth, has always been with us.

She succeeds in that end, but because this is a story of the white underclass, her conceptual relationship with race is problematic. It's not entirely sure what Isenberg thinks of the relationship between race and class in American history. At times, she makes reference to the conventional assertion that appeals to racism have often divided the black and white underclass, but this conventionally leftist appeal to a class-based interpretation doesn't seem to be her primary focus.

Another problem is that African-Americans appear to be the only non-white minority given much attention in this book. We learn little if anything about Hispanic Americans, or the Asian-American experience in the West. Her story begins in the early English colonies, and never really makes it past the Mississippi. And most unfortunately, there are times when her writing seems to suggest an equivalency being made between white poverty and black slavery. Her view is very focused on the rural South and her book might actually be stronger had she made a less sweeping claim to writing "The" story of class in the United States.

Still this is an ambitious book, not afraid to throw a wide net and find connections between colonial land squatters and twenty-first century reality tv stars. It will be interesting to see what Isenberg has to say on race and class in the future.