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White Trash

the 400-year Untold History of Class in America
Jul 18, 2017eilokeeffe rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
Well worth reading, "White Trash" explains much about American history that was left out of your high school courses. I felt that I got more of an idea about how the educated classes felt about the poor than I did about how they themselves felt. But this is likely a function of literacy. The upper classes had more opportunity to write about everything and thus leave historical documents. The section on the Civil War was especially revealing of how class and race conflicted regular people who had to choose a side. Among the more recent examples of lower class whites, the author includes Dolly Parton, the Bakers (Tammy Faye & Jim), LBJ and Elvis Presley. I missed some others she might have included: Loretta Lynn, Woody Guthrie, Willie Nelson. She mentions "Li'l Abner" without explaining that Al Capp, the creator, was a son of Jewish/Latvian immigrants from New York. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that current political strategies involve exploitation of these class and race differences in order to attempt to bamboozle the less educated once again.