White Trash: Race and Class in America

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. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Defining and Defying Stereotypes Sunset Trailer Park Name Calling: Objectifying "Poor Whites" and "White Trash" in Detroit Partners in Crime: African Americans and Non-Slaveholding Whites in Antebellum Georgia Bloody Footprints: Reflections on Growing Up Poor White Part II: White Trash Pictures Crackers and whackers: The White Trashing of Porn White Trash Girl: The Interview White Savagery and Humiliation, or a New Racial Consciousness in the Media Can Whiteness Speak? Institutional Anomies, Ontological Disasters, and Three Hollywood Films Part III: Producing and Consuming Poor Whites Trash-O-Nomics White Trash Religion Telling Stories of "Queer White Trash": Race, Class, and Sexuality in the Work of Dorothy Allison Acting Naturally: Cultural Distinction and Critiques of Pure Country The King of white Trash Culture: Elvis Presley and the Aesthetics of Excess Contributors Index