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The cover of White Trash

White Trash

Nancy Isenberg

Has America ever really been classless, or has it kept inventing new ways to rank and scorn its poor?

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At a glance

Author
Nancy Isenberg

Why read it

  • You will question the myth that every American citizen could exercise genuine influence over the government
  • You will learn how eugenics used science to justify breeding a master class
  • You will notice the second message in To Kill a Mockingbird, where the poor white Ewells are shown as human waste

Who it is for

  • A reader who thinks class does not matter in America
  • A student of Southern or American social history
  • A teacher using film to discuss race and class

Contents

  1. BY NANCY ISENBERG
  2. PREFACE
  3. INTRODUCTION
  4. Fables We Forget By
  5. Part I
  6. TO BEGIN THE WORLD ANEW
  7. CHAPTER ONE
  8. Taking Out the Trash
  9. Waste People in the New World
  10. CHAPTER TWO
  11. John Locke’s Lubberland
  12. The Settlements of Carolina and Georgia
  13. CHAPTER THREE
  14. Benjamin Franklin’s American Breed
  15. The Demographics of Mediocrity
  16. CHAPTER FOUR
  17. Thomas Jefferson’s Rubbish
  18. A Curious Topography of Class
  19. CHAPTER FIVE
  20. Andrew Jackson’s Cracker Country
  21. The Squatter as Common Man
  22. Part II
  23. DEGENERATION OF THE AMERICAN BREED
  24. CHAPTER SIX
  25. Pedigree and Poor White Trash
  26. Bad Blood, Half-Breeds, and Clay-Eaters
  27. CHAPTER SEVEN
  28. Cowards, Poltroons, and Mudsills
  29. Civil War as Class Warfare
  30. CHAPTER EIGHT
  31. Thoroughbreds and Scalawags
  32. Bloodlines and Bastard Stock in the Age of Eugenics
  33. CHAPTER NINE
  34. Forgotten Men and Poor Folk
  35. Downward Mobility and the Great Depression
  36. CHAPTER TEN
  37. The Cult of the Country Boy
  38. Elvis Presley, Andy Griffith, and LBJ’s Great Society
  39. Part III
  40. THE WHITE TRASH MAKEOVER
  41. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  42. Redneck Roots
  43. Deliverance, Billy Beer, and Tammy Faye
  44. CHAPTER TWELVE
  45. Outing Rednecks
  46. Slumming, Slick Willie, and Sarah Palin
  47. EPILOGUE
  48. America’s Strange Breed
  49. The Long Legacy of White Trash

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