White Trash

Description

Poor or marginal whites occupy an uncharted space in recent identity studies, particularly because they do not easily fit the model of whiteness-as-power proposed by many multiculturalist or minority discourses. Associated in mainstream culture with "trashy" kitsch or dangerous pathologies rather than with the material realities of economic life, poor whites are treated as degraded caricatures rather than as real people living in conditions of poverty and disempowerment. White Trash situates the study of poor whites within the context of several academic disciplines, public-policy analysis, and popular or mass-media representations. Arguing that white racism is directed not only against people of color but also against certain groups of whites, the contributors to this volume explore the ways in which race and class in America are often talked about and represented in hidden, coded, or half-realized ways. In so doing, they demonstrate why the term white trash itself embodies yet another way in which some whites generate a debased "other" through pejorative naming practices.

First Sentence

"I cried," my mother tells me, "when we first drove into that trailer park and I saw where we were going to live."

Subjects

Other Editions

• White Trash: Race and Class in AmericaRoutledge1996-12-20
• White TrashTaylor & Francis Group1996-01-01
• White trashRoutledge1997-01-01
• White TrashRoutledge1997-01-02
• White TrashRoutledge2013-01-01
• White TrashTaylor & Francis Group2013-01-01