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

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface to the Paperback Edition-Introduction

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Part 3-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3: “White Trash Makeover”

Part 3, Chapter 11 Summary: “Redneck Roots: Deliverance, Billy Beer, and Tammy Faye”

In the late 20th century, identity politics became a means for previously marginalized peoples to assert their value and authenticity. Many groups, such as poor white people, had historically had their identity defined by others with cultural power. In this period, people labeled as white trash began to defend their heritage and celebrate their tastes, speech, and foods. Various ethnic groups similarly sanitized their pasts by embracing the food and literature from their native lands while forgetting the masses of poor immigrants. A similar impulse, per Isenberg, would refashion poor white people as a cultural group, not an economic class. The middle class in this period came to be associated with inauthenticity and homogeneity.

However, hostility toward the poor persisted. The film Deliverance presented an extremely negative portrayal of poor Southerners, with a message that any sympathy for these poor folks was a sign of weakness to be overcome (280). Some politicians, such as West Virginia’s Robert Byrd, were openly hostile to the poor, labeling them deadbeats. They railed against welfare programs that they depicted as distributing money to debased individuals and whipped up public opinion against the programs. Even modern Southern leaders, such as Jimmy Carter, exhibited some hostility toward the poor. For example, he opposed increased black-lung benefits for miners, since he said that they chose their line of work, and he supported the Hyde Amendment, which denied poor women federal funds for abortions.

Carter had to differentiate himself from the Southern stereotype in his presidential campaign. Although he did not fit that image, as a Naval Academy graduate trained in nuclear physics, it dogged him. The media covered his brother, Billy, who was a smoker and drinker, and associated Jimmy with the redneck image. When Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in 1980 and replaced him in the White House, the Reagans rejected all that Carter symbolized; in fact, Nancy Reagan told “her friends that the Carters had turned the White House into a ‘pigsty’” (285). In other words, they were rural commoners or white trash. Later in the decade, the scandal of Reverend Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye reinforced the negative stereotype surrounding white trash. The couple went from trailer living to the life of millionaires by conning mainly poor white people to contribute to their church. Jim Bakker was found guilty of fraud and hypocrisy. Poor white people loved the couple for their appearance and tawdry behavior, which they associated with their own heritage. Even this image was not authentic, as neither Bakker was from the South.

Part 3, Chapter 12 Summary: “Outing Rednecks: Slumming, Slick Willie, and Sarah Palin”

During the 1980s and 1990s, growing numbers of people sought to reclaim the redneck label as a term of endearment. Working men wore the label as a “badge of honor” (291) and considered it akin to an ethnic identity. Yet, women could not wear the label of white trash or any other demeaning label as a badge of honor. Isenberg cites two women who wrote of their experiences in poverty. One lived in Maine and the other in South Carolina, and both concluded that they were trapped in poverty, with their so-called choices being filtered by their class and gender. Further, the very few who escape poverty are inclined to condemn those still trapped in it.

In 1993, Bill Clinton was elected US President. From humble origins in the Southern state of Arkansas, Clinton lived the American dream. He was a Rhodes Scholar who graduated from Yale Law School. However, he also embodied the stereotype of the Southern white poor person: His diet was unhealthy; his mother was a victim of domestic abuse; and his home was labeled a shack. Unlike previous Southern presidents plagued with these stereotypes, Clinton turned this identity into something that Americans embraced (298). He especially cultivated an association with Elvis, even playing one of Elvis’s songs on the saxophone on a television talk show.

That is not to say that Clinton did not have vicious critics. Dubbed Slick Willie by his opponents, Clinton was portrayed as slippery and a con man. The term conjured negative associations with the rural South. Conservatives deemed him an imposter, with the implication that he was white trash or a bastard breed. The Monica Lewinsky affair, for which Clinton was ultimately impeached but not removed from office, further played into the negative stereotype of poor white Southerners. The independent counsel who investigated the case, Ken Starr, recorded “every salacious detail” of the encounter and attempted to expose Clinton’s sexual deviance and dishonesty. Toni Morrison observed that Clinton was treated like an African American man, with elites trying to put him in his place. The public continued to support the President, however. His so-called Bubba image was more popular than that of the staid politician.

In 2008, the Republican Party nominated Sarah Palin from Wasilla, Alaska, as vice presidential candidate. She embodied the white trash stereotype, exhibiting no shame for her ignorance of public issues and her inability to articulate complex concepts. News of her unwed daughter’s pregnancy triggered a “shotgun engagement” (303). Her accent and winking additionally affirmed the stereotype. Unlike Bill Clinton, however, Palin could not offset this image with her educational credentials. Following her unsuccessful run for office as John McCain’s running mate, several television programs depicted the rural poor in stereotypical ways. Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty are two of the best-known examples. With the wealth gap widening in the US after 2000, conservatives bashed white poor people, depicting them as responsible for their own poverty. In so doing, the critics denied “that the nation’s economic structure has a causal relationship with the social phenomena they highlight” (309). Instead they blamed the poor for their poor manners.

Epilogue Summary: “America’s Strange Breed: The Long Legacy of White Trash”

An underclass exists in the US and always has. When efforts are made to improve the conditions of those in poverty, angry citizens resist and denounce attempts at social leveling. Class defines how people live in the US, but it is not simply a matter of income and wealth. Class continues to be described in physical and bodily terms, with a language of breeding retained. The poor live in trailer parks and are considered dirty. Poverty and wealth are associated with location, or the value of the land. “Waste people” continue to perform the worst jobs and to be invisible. The best predictor of success is the class status of one’s forebears.

However, large numbers of people vote against their self-interests in favor of a false sense of identity. In the South, in particular, racial and class dominance are intertwined (319). Today’s scalawags are those claiming that the interests of poor white and Black people are the same. Why have class power relations been ignored, given this relationship to racial injustice? While the narrative of the underclass is discomforting to those in the middle and upper classes, it is an integral part of the American story.

Part 3-Epilogue Analysis

In the age of identity politics, the white poor sought to claim and embrace the identity assigned to them as rednecks. Akin to presenting themselves as an ethnic group, they celebrated the cultural aspects of their identity, such as food and clothing, but divorced them from their economic realities. The upper and middle classes remained disdainful of white poor people despite this attempted makeover. Indeed, political leaders and makers of popular culture are more inclined to use the redneck identity for their own purposes of acquiring power or making money. Into the 21st century, Hollywood continues to produce programs such as Honey Boo Boo that laugh at the white poor, not with them. Politicians pretend to be one of them, invoking a stereotypical style, while secretly making fun of them. Isenberg cites Donald Trump as such an example in her preface. He insulted elites and tolerated violence at rallies, acting the part of the redneck. However, he is a wealthy New Yorker who has nothing to do with the rural poor.

Arguing that Americans have accepted a democracy of manners over real democracy, Isenberg notes that the white poor need economic improvement. The policies of those who imitate the mannerisms of the stereotypical redneck do nothing to improve the lives of the rural poor. She acknowledges how challenging it is to pass policies that would improve the lives of the underclass. Whenever such policies are proposed, the middle-class rallies against them. The same old stereotypes are marched out to condemn the poor as lazy and undeserving of help. Even when presidents with roots in the rural South have been elected, they have not done much for this class. For example, she cites Jimmy Carter’s refusal to expand benefits for those with black lung disease and points out that Bill Clinton ended the system of welfare as a right and allowed states to place conditions on it. Ironically, both Clinton and Carter were never truly accepted by the elite of Washington. They were both defined by their rural class origins in the South. Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar who graduated from Yale Law School, but the labels of Bubba and Slick Willie clung to him. Neither Carter nor Clinton was racist. However, their inability to escape the assigned identity of redneck is testament to the continuing elite belief in the heritability of class status. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate in 2008, so openly embraced and embodied the stereotype that Hollywood and others felt comfortable mocking it. This continued upper- and middle-class disdain for the white underclass ultimately causes the white poor to support those who mock the elite, even when those mockers are doing so simply to manipulate them and do not actually support policies that would advance their interests.