Author: Nancy Isenberg
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| via Amazon |
My usual disclaimer: I honestly try to avoid both religion and politics here on the blog. But sometimes it's unavoidable. And in truth, Isenberg's book isn't about politics. It's about a history we've chosen to ignore in the United States. Here we go...
The American Dream is a sham. Yup, that's more or less Isenberg's thesis and she makes her case quite convincingly. Our government and economic structures are not built to encourage social mobility. They never have been. Don't believe me? How about our ongoing debates over paying for healthcare and higher education, problems other industrial nations have sorted out? Or how about reproductive rights? Or consumer debt? It's all about keeping everyone in their own social stratum. The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. Everyone in the middle wonders why it's so hard to make ends meet.
It's nothing new. Isenberg goes all the way back to the first white settlements in Jamestown and Plymouth. Those with land had all of the power. Everyone else was exploitable and expendable labor. It's been more or less the same story ever since, through wars, Reconstruction, red lining and all the rest.
The stars, as it were, of Isenberg's historical narrative are poor southern whites. They've been scapegoated and forgotten. They've been exploited, seduced and duped politically. They've been the primary targets of the New Deal and the War on Poverty. They've been a voyeuristic attraction of our reality television-loving 21st century culture. And they're still poor, neglected and undereducated. And they're consistently fooled into voting against their own interests.
The story of America is the story of race. Our country was built on the backs of not one but two genocides. I don't think Isenberg would disagree with my assertion but she does offer a nuanced perspective on race, particularly in the South. Even before the Civil War, the rich and powerful in the South used the fear of an empowered freed slave population to scare poor whites into supporting secession and, most importantly, becoming soldiers. After all (and I honestly never thought of this before), the only people in the South who actually benefited from slaves were those who owned them. Most people didn't. And all those rich people needed someone to fight the war for them because they sure weren't going to do it themselves. What's more, they were able to use the same fear to suppress the Black vote and cement Democratic Party control of the South for the next 100 years.
That's right, folks. Let us never forget that the Dems were the segregationist party until LBJ signed the Civil Rights Bill. Back to the book...
Without question, I've learned a lot from White Trash. I have a new perspective on class in America. I guess I've always naively believed that poverty is a bad thing and everyone else thinks so, too. I mean, I know that many Americans live in denial of the fact that social class exists in our country. I know that too many see poverty as a moral choice - "Get a job! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" - rather than an inescapable reality of capitalism. I always thought that was all merely a matter of short-sightedness.
But Isenberg has shown me a darker truth: many believe that others deserve to be poor. In order for some to have plenty, others must lack. And those who lack are lesser humans - indeed, trash. And it's not just a few "bad" people who see things that way. It's enough to perpetuate the same cycles over multiple generations. I don't want to believe it's true. I want to think better of my country and its citizens. But the evidence is damning.
So yes, you should read the book. Just don't expect it to improve your opinion of humanity.
This may not makes sense, but all dystopian futures are based on this.
ReplyDeleteIt's crazy-making.
Being someone who grew up in the South, I don't know how to deal with all of this, because they -choose- to be uneducated, and I have never been able to deal with that.
It's all pretty wild. As a teacher, I deal with poverty every day. Institutionally, we work hard at making up the gap for people. But for the broader society? I'm not sure the north does a whole lot better than the south.
DeleteI don't know about schools in the north, but what I know about schools in the south is that there is an attitude, especially toward science, that you don't need to know that stuff. I don't know how many times I was told growing up, "You don't need all that education. All you need to know is what's in the Bible." Though teachers can't say that to a student, the attitude exists. Science, history, any kind of higher math, they're bad. They will lead you astray.
DeleteI don't really think that particular attitude exists in the north.
I know enough to know the south is genuinely different. However, the north - and the northeast in particular - is often too quick to pat itself on the back as the more socially progressive part of the country. Relatively speaking, it probably is but that doesn't mean the attitude of seeing the poor as lesser humans doesn't occasionally (frequently?) rear its ugly head and get in the way of real progress.
DeleteWow! I never heard of this book but it sounds really interesting especially when you mentioned how most who went to war, from the South, were not even slave owners but duped...nothing much has changed. We have our own genocide with the indigenous people who were forced into areas and are very poor. The young were taken out and forced to learn the Catholic way and now many mass grave sites have been found on these properties. It is truly so sad.
ReplyDeleteFirst Nations history in Canada is fascinating though, as you say, often sad.
DeleteOften we don’t understand generational “curses” and how easily they self-perpetuate. Bad decisions become acts of survival. In some regions, though, very often deemed the epitome of “white trash,” they’re living lives that are deliberately counter to greater cultural expectations. I didn’t think Nomadland deserved Best Picture at the Oscars, but it’s a rare opportunity to explore some it from a somewhat positive perspective. (Even pointing that out, even though I knew the whole point of it winning was to try and bridge things from the other side of the Hollywood divide).
ReplyDeleteThe absolute craziest thing I’ve witnessed is that the people who typify this segment of Americans basically have exactly what the richest Americans have: large isolated property. The only real thing that separates them is the diverging sense of self-sufficiency.
How many of them actually own their property, though? Or what is that property actually worth? Sure, some own their trailer homes but that's the sort of property that depreciates quickly.
DeleteWel, I (used to) have extended family in Missouri. They have a real house on real property, that’s put to practical use. My home state of Maine is a cross-section of these cultures, too, which converges in many of the same interests. Really, to find it you have to think of the country as more than the sum of its urban populations, which I think is the major stumbling block of national thought. And we tend to be endlessly reductive when we do, assuming all urban dwellers are one party affiliation and all rural the other. And further assume things based on those conclusions. We lost the narrative when we started thinking that way.
DeleteWell, I think the true stumbling is white suburbia believing it has the slightest clue about how anyone else lives, assuming they care at all.
DeleteAnd yes, I readily admit I'm a product of that white suburbia.
Thanks for the review. I have seen this book and have pondered reading it. As for my opinion of humanity (which isn't great, has gone downhill after yesterday's remembrances and my current reading of "Heretical Fiction: Religion in the Literature of Mark Twain." I hope 2022 is a good one for you and yours.
ReplyDeleteIt's a sobering read, to be sure.
DeleteYou know I'm always down for exploring Twain.
Thank you and I wish for you a bountiful 2022 as well.
Sad but true. Rich-poor divides everywhere seem to be worsening, and the promoted choice is to blame the poor. It's good that books like this are around to make some balance. (I'm British so I don't critique other nations, it's mostly our colonialist fault.)
ReplyDeleteYup, the British heritage shoulders a lot of the blame in Isenberg's book. However, generally speaking, post-War Europe, UK included, has faired better than the US in terms of social safety nets, particularly in terms of healthcare and higher ed.
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