{"product_id":"white-trash-book","title":"White Trash Book","description":"“When you turn an election into a three-ring circus, there’s always a chance that the dancing bear will win,” says Isenberg of the political climate surrounding Sarah Palin. And we recognize how right she is today. Yet the voters that put Trump in the White House have been a permanent part of our American fabric, argues Isenberg.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement to today's hillbillies. 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.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSurveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America’s supposedly class-free society––where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. 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. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics–-a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ’s Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHere Comes Honey Boo Boo \u003c\/em\u003eand \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eDuck Dynasty. \u003c\/em\u003eMarginalized as a class, white trash have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the character of the American identity.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly stain on our nation’s history. With Isenberg’s landmark book, we will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class as well.","brand":"Microcosm Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42802582585515,"sku":"","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0455\/7037\/files\/Screenshot2023-07-15at11-49-28WhiteTrashThe400-YearUntoldHistoryofClassinAmerica.png?v=1689436210","url":"https:\/\/halfmoonmusic.com\/products\/white-trash-book","provider":"HalfMoonMusic","version":"1.0","type":"link"}