![]() ![]() With Isenberg's landmark book, we will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class as well. We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly stain on our nation's history. 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. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics. 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. OFFICIAL BOOK DESCRIPTION: In her groundbreaking history of the class system in America, extending from colonial times to the present, Nancy Isenberg takes on our comforting myths about equality, uncovering the crucial legacy of the ever-present, always embarrassingif occasionally entertainingpoor. In White Trash, Nancy Isenberg upends assumptions about America's supposedly class-free society. 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. The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement. ![]()
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