6/28/2023 0 Comments Nancy isenberg white trash summary![]() ![]() The British system of class imprinted itself on American soil from the beginning, and poor white laborers had little chance for social mobility. ![]() Part one, "To Begin the World Anew," explains how the waste people of England-those individuals who were not profitably engaged in labor of some kind-were imported to America as indentured servants and contracted laborers. White Trash begins in the colonial area, where Isenberg is at her best. ![]() Although Isenberg's premise and phrase is at times repetitive, this reader ultimately found "waste people" to be a useful term in thinking about power and the process by which class is made and re-made. This term is the greatest contribution of the book, and she uses it frequently. Isenberg uses the neologism "waste people" to describe the "unwanted and salvageable" lower-class white people of American history (p. Poor whites have been known by many names across time and place, but, like class hierarchies, "they do not disappear" (p. She argues that "white trash" people are a "central, if disturbing, thread in our national narrative," and are essential to American national identity (p. The premise of her book is straightforward: America has a class system and always has. ![]() As the title of her book suggests, Nancy Isenberg's White Trash seeks to ambitiously re-frame 400 years of American history-from the colonial period to the present-through the lens of class. ![]()
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