Argument Analysis #2 In the Atlantic article “The Original Underclass” by Alec MacGillis, he explores what it means to the “white working-class” and its history in America. Most importantly, the article makes the distinction of exit pollster’s definition of the “white working class” as Caucasian people without a 4-year college degree, which MacGillis considers to be overbroad and does not consider geography and culture. Then, he describes the history of poor white Americans from their arrival to the colonies to present day and how they have always been characterized as lazy, selfish, and degenerate. Often, they are reduced to stereotypes such as: “white trash,” “rednecks,” “hillbillies,” and “trailer trash.” Also, he discusses the social …show more content…
First of those sources is Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. In this book, she chronicles the history of the poor treatment of the poor, white working-class by the white elite from the development of the colonies until around the 20th century. In one of her major arguments, she states that it is a myth that the act of leaving Europe to colonize the Americas, instead the class system from England was retained and heavily enforced. She mainly focuses on the poor whites in the Deep South which explores the dynamic between poor whites and slaves. For those against slavery, associating labor to slavery was harmful to the work ethic of poor whites in the area, meanwhile, for those defending slavery, slave kept poor whites a step above the poor Northern whites who were at the same level as poor freed African Americans. This leads her to ignore other populations of poor white Americans who live in other parts of the country and isolated from African American populations. For example, she does not believe that the poor, white working-class residing in Appalachia descends from Scots-Irish heritage and that they left to Appalachia to avoid the elites in coastal cities. Her arguments were based on historical evidence and analysis. On the other hand, J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in a Crisis. …show more content…
Like Isenberg states, poor, white peoples in America were always associated with waste and refuse, often, using terms like “trash,” “squatters,” “savage,” and ”brute” to describe them. Not only that, they are often characterized as lazy and dumb. The media and pop culture continue to perpetuate and encourage this stereotype. Not only that, with the Trump victory in the 2016 elections, poor, white people are often stereotyped as racist and they are blamed by both sides of the spectrum as the reason Trump won. As a result, these stereotypes dehumanize them and breeds resentment in those who are being stereotyped. Negative stereotypes on both sides impact the current political and societal climate because it makes it harder to communicate and cooperate with one another to make political and social decisions that would help not just the poor whites, but everyone else as
Originally published in 1999, Mary Pattillo’s Black Picket Fences explores the circumstances and conventions of the Black middle class, a group that has experienced both scholarly and popular neglect. In the Acknowledgments section of this work, Pattillo details the mentorship she received as a graduate student from William Julius Wilson at the University of Chicago. She recounts that Wilson often encouraged his students to extend, and even challenge his scholarly works, and that this urging provided the impetus for her research on the Black middle class (xiv). The challenge Pattillo (2013) refers to, becomes quite apparent when comparing her work to Wilson’s 1980 piece, The Declining Significance of Race. In this work, Wilson (1980) contends that in the industrial/modern era of the United States, class has surpassed race to be a salient factor of social stratification. He supplements his argument by referencing the progress and achievements of the Black middle class, relative to the “economic stagnation” of the Black underclass (p. 2). Pattillo (2013) offers a
Race becomes important because it is often the unconscious method of discrimination in the educational structure in Waretown. The Mexican-American girls who become upwardly mobile are seen as the exception. White girls who became upwardly mobile didn’t face any dissonant reactions when they achieved mobility because it was normalized of the white race. Mexican-American girls, however, did face dissonance because it was not typically expected of them. They would often fight the administration much more than white girls in order to avoid being placed on the vocational track and have to work harder to stay out of it. The exceptionality of these girls proves how important and influential cultural capital is in shaping class futures. Only a small fraction of working-class and Mexican-American girls were upwardly mobile, largely due to the fact that they didn’t have the needed cultural capital. There had to be intervening factors, such as sports, private schools, or siblings, in order for these girls to gain the cultural capital needed to be mobile. Without this cultural capital, many of the working-class girls would have had the same future as their parents and remained working class. Cultural capital becomes key for shaping class
Over the past few years the white working class has become docile in means of what Sara Palin describes as “Real America”, a thriving class of individuals who pride themselves on worth ethic. However, the article takes the more known impression of this group of Americans by providing the historical upbringing of the “white trash” as it first appeared in print in 1821; similarly, to how Outing Whiteness,
* Raised on a cotton farm in Dyess, Arkansas, Cash articulated a racialized class divide not simply among whites and African Americans, but among whites, themselves. Cash belonged to a growing class of impoverished white farmers increasingly referred to by his contemporaries as "white trash," and recast by historian Neil Foley as "The White Scourge. " In his book of the same title, Foley analyzes the impact of class and race consciousness on white tenants and sharecroppers in central Texas as they competed for farm labor with both African Americans and Mexicans from 1820 to 1940. Foley asserts, "The emergence of a rural class of 'white trash' made whites conscious of themselves as a racial group and fearful that if they fell to the bottom, they would lose the racial privileges that came with being accepted for what they were not-black, Mexican, or foreign born. "
The poor whites are looked down on from the rich whites. “The black children learned to fear poor whites more than other whites simply because they were known to express their racism by brutal and brutal acts of violence. The white trash flaunted their poverty and weren’t ashamed. Most poor white folks didn’t want to live anywhere near black folks “Hooks pg.199). “The white poor in fact make up the vast majority of the poor in this society. Then, the mass migration of poor blacks from southern states to northern cities created a huge urban poor population, where the white poor continued to live in isolated rural and suburban areas.” (Hooks pg.
In a society whose dominant narrative revolves around meritocracy, values such as a strong work ethic often take a higher precedence over other factors in describing social mobility. The “American Dream” serves as this narrative, reinforcing the belief that anyone has the capacity to succeed if they work hard enough. Yet disparities regarding social mobility are present between ethnic groups in America, which begs the question— why? Thomas Sowell’s Ethic America and Stephen Steinberg’s The Ethnic Myth attempt to make sense of these ethnic variations of social mobility, but both come to drastically different conclusions. Through comparing the theoretical frameworks, arguments, and conclusions of both Sowell and Steinberg, it becomes clear which
In this paper, Gregory Mantsios compares and contrasts class in America. He uses facts to support his point that things are getting better for the upper class, while things are increasingly getting worse for the middle and lower classes. Throughout the paper, he demonstrates comparing and contrasting by using “myth” versus “reality”.
In the first section of Frazier’s Black Bourgeoisie, “The World of Reality”, Frazier introduces his discussion of the interplay of class and race. He outlines the historical roots of the social place of most African-Americans in the U.S.A. and that of the black middle class. Frazier asserts the inconsequential place of middle class African-Americans and their resulting inferiority complex. He depicts the black middle class as living in a “no man’s land” in the dominant white culture of America.
As the United States developed and grew, upward mobility was central to the American dream. It was the unstated promise that no matter where you started, you had the chance to grow and proceed beyond your initial starting point. In the years following the Civil War, the promise began to fade. People of all races strived to gain the representation, acknowledgement and place in this society. To their great devastation, this hope quickly dwindled. Social rules were set out by the white folk, and nobody could rise above their social standing unless they were seen fit to be part of the white race. The social group to be impacted the most by this “social rule” was the African Americans. Black folk and those who were sympathetic to the idea of equal rights to blacks were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan. (Burton, 1998) The turning point in North Carolina politics was the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898. It was a very bold and outrageous statement from the white supremacists to the black folk. The Democratic white supremacists illegally seized power from the local government and destroyed the neighborhood by driving out the African Americans and turning it from a black-majority to a white-majority city. (Class Discussion 10/3/13) This event developed the idea that even though an African American could climb a ladder to becoming somebody in his or her city, he or she will never become completely autonomous in this nation. Charles W. Chesnutt discusses the issue of social mobility in his novel The Marrow of Tradition. Olivia Carteret, the wife of a white supremacist is also a half-sister to a Creole woman, Janet Miller. As the plot develops, we are able to see how the social standing of each woman impacts her everyday life, and how each woman is ...
Since the beginning of slavery in the America, Africans have been deemed inferior to the whites whom exploited the Atlantic slave trade. Africans were exported and shipped in droves to the Americas for the sole purpose of enriching the lives of other races with slave labor. These Africans were sold like livestock and forced into a life of servitude once they became the “property” of others. As the United States expanded westward, the desire to cultivate new land increased the need for more slaves. The treatment of slaves was dependent upon the region because different crops required differing needs for cultivation. Slaves in the Cotton South, concluded traveler Frederick Law Olmsted, worked “much harder and more unremittingly” than those in the tobacco regions.1 Since the birth of America and throughout its expansion, African Americans have been fighting an uphill battle to achieve freedom and some semblance of equality. While African Americans were confronted with their inferior status during the domestic slave trade, when performing their tasks, and even after they were set free, they still made great strides in their quest for equality during the nineteenth century.
Stereotypes are like scalp dandruff, unnecessary, ugly, and hard to get rid of, unless you have the right shampoo. That shampoo could symbolize proper education or enlightenment for getting rid of that particular stereotype. Some stereotypes are so absurd we sometimes wonder where the heck did they even originate from. For example, Asians are bad drivers, or white people cannot dance. However there is a type of stereotype that has some little truth to it, but you find it is not the people who we are stereotyping’s fault. To be more specific, there is a stereotypical view that poor minorities are sometimes considered uneducated. This lack of minorities’ education is not their fault, but the fault of unlikely outside forces. Therefore there is some truth to this particular stereotype, but the minorities are not to blame for their lack of education. Few opportunities are given to them, starting with housing then leading to schools which would then affect their individual education.
We, as a society, feel the need to draw imaginary lines to separate ourselves whether it’s the line between color of our skin, our religion differences, our political beliefs, or the status of our class. As much as I wish there wasn’t a defining line between high class and the educated vs. low class and uneducated, there is. In Mike Rose’s narrative essay “Blue-Collar Brilliance,” he describes his mother’s lack of education and her hard labor work which is the quote on quote the blue collar working class.
In his essay, “On Being Black and Middle Class” (1988), writer and middle-class black American, Shelby Steele adopts a concerned tone in order to argue that because of the social conflicts that arise pertaining to black heritage and middle class wealth, individuals that fit under both of these statuses are ostracized. Steele proposes that the solution to this ostracization is for people to individualize themselves, and to ‘“move beyond the victim-focused black identity” (611). Steele supports his assertion by using evidence from his own life and incorporating social patterns to his text. To reach his intended audience of middle-class, black people, Steele’s utilizes casual yet, imperative diction.
In his essay “Land of Opportunity” James W. Loewen details the ignorance that most American students have towards class structure. He bemoans the fact that most textbooks completely ignore the issue of class, and when it does it is usually only mentions middle class in order to make the point that America is a “middle class country. This is particularly grievous to Loewen because he believes, “Social class is probably the single most important variable in society. From womb to tomb, it correlates with almost all other social characteristics of people that we can measure.” Loewen simply believes that social class usually determine the paths that a person will take in life. (Loewen 203)
With this minority members in a society can result in discriminating actions such as exclusion, oppression, expulsion, and extermination. Good Americans who want to reduce poverty say that race should not be relevant to problems. Poor African Americans are more likely to live in high poverty neighborhoods with less resources and options than whites. This is a problem because high poverty communities are more likely to have less quality schools, housing and health care. African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to live in these communities than whites.