Not Quite White

Wray Matt Wray

Description

White trash. The phrase conjures up images of dirty rural folk who are poor, ignorant, violent, and incestuous. But where did this stigmatizing phrase come from? And why do these stereotypes persist? Matt Wray answers these and other questions by delving into the long history behind this term of abuse and others like it. Ranging from the early 1700s to the early 1900s, Not Quite White documents the origins and transformations of the multiple meanings projected onto poor rural whites in the United States. Wray draws on a wide variety of primary sources-literary texts, folklore, diaries and journals, medical and scientific articles, social scientific analyses-to construct a dense archive of changing collective representations of poor whites.Of crucial importance are the ideas about poor whites that circulated through early-twentieth-century public health campaigns, such as hookworm eradication and eugenic reforms. In these crusades, impoverished whites, particularly but not exclusively in the American South, were targeted for interventions by sanitarians who viewed them as "filthy, lazy crackers" in need of racial uplift and by eugenicists who viewed them as a "feebleminded menace" to the white race, threats that needed to be confined and involuntarily sterilized.Part historical inquiry and part sociological investigation, Not Quite White demonstrates the power of social categories and boundaries to shape social relationships and institutions, to invent groups where none exist, and to influence policies and legislation that end up harming the very people they aim to help. It illuminates not only the cultural significance and consequences of poor white stereotypes but also how dominant whites exploited and expanded these stereotypes to bolster and defend their own fragile claims to whiteness.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Biological anthropology

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 03 novembre 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822388593
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Not Quite White

Not Quite White

W H I T E T R A S Ha n d t h e

B O U N D A R I E Sof W H I T E N E S S

Matt Wray

Duke University Press Durham and London 200

©  Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper  Designed by C. H. Westmoreland Typeset in Minion with ITC Stone display by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

for

Jill, Zachar y,andMaxine,

and in loving memory of

Eric Rofes

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgmentsix

Introduction White Trash as Social Difference: Groups, Boundaries, and Inequalities 

1 Lubbers, Crackers, and Poor White Trash: Borders and Boundaries in the Colonies and the Early Republic 

2 Imagining Poor Whites in the Antebellum South: Abolitionist and Pro-Slavery Fictions 

3 ‘‘Three Generations of Imbeciles Are Enough’’: American Eugenics and Poor White Trash 

4 ‘‘The Disease of Laziness’’: Crackers, Poor Whites, and Hookworm Crusaders in the New South 

5 Limning the Boundaries of Whiteness 

Notes

References

Index

Preface and Acknowledgments

This idea for this book grew out of a place where nothing much happened and no one really gave a damn. The people there were mostly white, and mostly poor. There wasn’t much of a middle class, except for a few well- educated folk trying hard not to be snotty so their kids wouldn’t get beat up at school. There wasn’t a real upper crust either—the only rich people were summer folk at the lake and the weekend skiers up from their urban and suburban homes. It could have been in New Hampshire, or West Virginia, or California, or one of thousands of places across America. A place full of weeds and broken glass, worn-out buildings and faded paint. Here the crumbling walls of an old mill, there the iron tracks of the old railroad, everywhere piles of busted tires laying toppled in stagnant heaps. Broken-down steel machines, rusted in place, are harsh reminders of jobs that came and went. In pickup trucks and trailer parks,stations play songs of failure and loss, the twang of bad endings and hard regrets cutting into the air like spikes of old barbed wire. In church on Sundays and Wednesday nights, preachers preach ser- mons on hard work, coping with sin, and coming to Christ. Tuesday is league night at the bowling alley: big men, their bellies gone flabby with beer, roll balls at the pins, while their girlfriends and wives smoke men- thol cigarettes and drink gin and tonics in the lounge. Thursday is ladies’ night and the women bowl for free. Friday and Saturday nights the kids pack into muscle cars and pickups and cruise the town, looking for some- thing—anything—to do. Party at the gravel pit: drink cheap beer around an oily fire, smoke some sticky ditch weed, get hammered, and drive home. I grew up in this kind of place. For a time, my father was the minis- ter of a small local church where members lived in trailers and, in winter,