Posted on 08/06/2016 3:34:10 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Sometime during the past few years, the country started talking differently about white Americans of modest means.
Early in the Obama era, the ennobling language of campaign pundits prevailed. There was much discussion of “white working-class voters,” with whom the Democrats, and especially Barack Obama, were having such trouble connecting. Never mind that this overbroad category of Americans — the exit pollsters’ definition was anyone without a four-year college degree, or more than a third of the electorate — obliterated major differences in geography, ethnicity, and culture. The label served to conjure a vast swath of salt-of-the-earth citizens living and working in the wide-open spaces between the coasts — Sarah Palin’s “real America” — who were dubious of the effete, hifalutin types increasingly dominating the party that had once purported to represent the common man.
The “white working class” connoted virtue and integrity. A party losing touch with it was a party unmoored.
That flattering glow has faded away. Today, less privileged white Americans are considered to be in crisis, and the language of sociologists and pathologists predominates. Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010” was published in 2012, and Robert D. Putnam’s “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis” came out last year. From opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, they made the case that social breakdown among low-income whites was starting to mimic trends that had begun decades earlier among African Americans: Rates of out-of-wedlock births and male joblessness were rising sharply. Then came the stories about a surge in opiate addiction among white Americans, alongside shocking reports of rising mortality rates (including by suicide) among middle-aged whites. And then, of course, came the 2016 presidential campaign. The question was suddenly no longer why Democrats struggled to appeal to regular Americans. It was why so many regular Americans were drawn to a man like Donald Trump. Equally jarring has been the shift in tone. A barely suppressed contempt has characterized much of the commentary about white woe, on both the left and the right. Writing for National Review in March, the conservative provocateur Kevin Williamson shoveled scorn on the low-income white Republican voters who, as he saw it, were most responsible for the rise of Trump...
Huge cut. MUCH more in th article. Please read the whole thing.
The term white trash first came into common use in the 1830s as a pejorative used by house slaves against poor whites. In 1833 Fanny Kemble, an English actress visiting Georgia, noted in her journal: “The slaves themselves entertain the very highest contempt for white servants, whom they designate as ‘poor white trash’”
...By 1855 the term had passed into common usage by upper class whites, and was common usage among all Southerners, regardless of race, throughout the rest of the 19th century.
JMHo
White Americans who are not hooked into globalism present a real problem for the globalists. We have the history and culture of Americanism. And it ain’t globalism.
They hate us because they know we have the power to derail them if we wake up and come together. They have built their world on treason.
I’m a ditchdigger who used to live in a trailer.
And damn proud of it.
Shoot, things are already getting bad for whites and we’re still (barely) the majority. Whites are now bashed, assumed to be “privileged,” ridiculed in the media, discriminated against in hiring and scholarships, etc., etc. Any town, group, company, etc. that is all or majority white is now considered evil.
When our children or grandchildren are minorities, life in this country will be a bloody living hell for them.
The one I live I own. It is on a rented lot. But the landlord pays the $80/month city bill out of my $250 lot rent. We have a nice yard. I own the trailer across the street. My son and grand kids live in it. Both are remodeled. People are not allowed to accumulate trash. All vehicles must be in running condition. We own all 5 of our vehicles. I am a professional tradesman. Most of my friends, family, and acquaintances are too. So if I need a plumber, electrician, HVAC, mechanic, ditch digger, well driller, etc. I just phone a friend/family. If they need a carpenter they call me. No one charges for their services as any parts are paid for by whoever needs the fixing.
We take care of each other. And don’t need smarmy politicians and bureaucrats interfering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElQdOTrvzBA
Looks like a picture didn’t come through. Could you re-post?
*snort*
Thanks for that great article.
Makes the point —subtly, between the lines—that “white trash” had in many ways a more hardscrabble life than slaves.
Slaves were sought out and considered valuable commodities in building the agrarian economy of early America, and even though the concept of human beings as commodities presented a moral conundrum, plantation slaves, at the very least, had their material needs provided.
Many slaves were in fact far more materially comfortable than the bottom-rung whites, who, as Isenberg points out, were landless, couldn’t get land other than by squatting, and had their rough cabins burnt down and meager gardens destroyed whites who did own the land.
Nobody wanted the white trash around. They were on their own.
Isenberg dismisses any possibility Scots-Irish-Celtic roots of Appalachian hillbillies. Many others disagree, and so do I.
The connections can be heard clearly in the hillbilly and bluegrass music of the poor whites of that region; the music’s Celtic roots has been the subject of various scholarly studies.
Sounds like a good book, though. Isenberg hails from my alma mater, LSU.
Thanks for posting!
Thomas Sowell, in “Black Rednecks and White Liberals,” makes the case that the culture we now call “urban” originated with lower-class rural whites.
As a historical question, it’s of some interest. However, it’s a matter of present fact that the culture often described as “trash” by others generally results in poor life outcomes.
One of my NC FRiends calls himself and his forebears “Caucasian recyclables.”
I just josh about the trailor stuff. I have a couple of good friends who live in them. One of who lives in an exposed area up on a mountain. Beautiful view, and ideal hunting land, but I worry about her and her family as we are prone to tornadoes....but, thankfully, they have a storm shelter.
If you ever need a new spot to park your trailer, drop me a note!
Attacking and stereotyping poor white rednecks is actually psychological displacement of liberal racist impulses toward a safe, white target. When the MSM and liberals scorn Billy Bob and LouAnn, they’re really attacking NuShawn and LaToya by proxy.
What’s an Irish 7 course meal?
6 pack and a potato ;)
Well, as long as you didn’t use your fingernails.
And you know, I lived in a trailer, for a time, with my “wife to be”, as I was reminded by a neighbor, and I got kicked out by the owner ... an unseemly affair which included a lampshade blowing off the back of a pickup truck as we made our exit. Sered in my memory. So ... I’m there.
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