Home > Work > White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
81 " Without a visible hand, markets did not at any time, and do not now, magically pave the way for the most talented to be rewarded; the well connected were and are preferentially treated. "
― Nancy Isenberg , White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
82 " There is no way to know precisely how many men deserted. The official count from the U.S. provost marshal’s report was 103,400. This was out of a total of 750,000 to 850,000 men listed as in the army by the end of the war. "
83 " And so the great American saga, as taught, excludes the very pertinent fact that after the 1630s, less than half came to Massachusetts for religious reasons. "
84 " Both crackers and squatters—two terms that became shorthand for landless migrants—supposedly stayed just one step ahead of the “real” farmers, Jefferson’s idealized, commercially oriented cultivators. They lived off the grid, rarely attended a school or joined a church, and remained a potent symbol of poverty. "
85 " Sounding a lot like the critics in our present who deplore the concentration of wealth among the top 1 percent of Americans, Wallace in 1936 argued that liberty was impossible if “36 thousand families at the top of the economic pyramid get as much income as 12 million families at the bottom. "
86 " What history teaches us about the true character of American democracy is that it cannot be generalized, and it cannot be defined scientifically. One cannot effectively lump voters together into arbitrary blocs based on demographic statistics and have it mean anything: there is no reductionist, easily definable women’s vote, or black or Latino vote, or Evangelical vote, or youth vote. "
87 " Though Johnson had a proven record as a New Dealer and modern progressive, on the national stage he was still regarded as a regional figure. He refused to go easy on white rule in the South. "
88 " Liberty is a revolving door, which explains the reality of downward mobility. The door ushers some in while it escorts others out into the cold. It certainly allows for, even encourages, exploitation. Through a process of rationalization, people have long tended to blame failure on the personal flaws of individuals—this has been the convenient refrain of Republicans in Congress in the second decade of the twenty-first century, when former Speaker of the House John Boehner publicly equated joblessness with personal laziness. "
89 " It is only occasionally shaken up, as when the Occupy Wall Street movement of recent years shone an embarrassing light on the financial sector and the grotesque separation between the 1 percent and the 99 percent. And then the media giants find new crises and the nation’s inherited disregard for class reboots, as the subject recedes into the background again. An "
90 " Jackson’s personality was a crucial part of his democratic appeal as well as the animosity he provoked. "
91 " As the “waste firm of America” was settled, it would become a place where the surplus poor, the waste people of England, could be converted into economic assets. "
92 " 1929, with his appearance in the movie Hearts in Dixie, the very visible African American actor known as Stepin Fetchit began a film career in which he popularized for an entire generation the crude stereotype of laziness suggested by his on-screen name. "
93 " In 1818, General Andrew Jackson invaded Florida without presidential approval; as president, he supported the forced removal of the Cherokees from the southeastern states and willfully ignored the opinion of the Supreme Court. "
94 " As majority leader of the Senate, and during his vice presidency as chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, it was Lyndon Johnson who first promoted “stepping into the space race” and making it a national priority to put a man on the moon. "
95 " How could educated Americans have denied the effect of such persistent prejudice in distorting the southern class system? The reason is actually rather obvious: a fear of unleashing genuine class upheaval "
96 " Shall then this man go hungry, here in lands Blest by his honor, builded by his hands? Do something for him: let him never be Forgotten: let him have his daily bread: He who has fed us, let him now be fed. Let us remember his tragic lot— Remember, or else be ourselves forgot! —Edwin Markham, “The Forgotten Man” (1932) I "
97 " Wars in general, and civil wars to a greater degree, have the effect of exacerbating class tensions, because the sacrifices of war are always distributed unequally, and the poor are hit hardest. North and South had staked so much on their class-based definitions of nationhood that it is no exaggeration to say that in the grand scheme of things, Union and Confederate leaders saw the war as a clash of class systems wherein the superior civilization would reign triumphant. "
98 " Distant American colonies were presented as a cure. The poor could be purged. In 1622, the famous poet and clergyman John Donne wrote of Virginia in this fashion, describing the new colony as the nation’s spleen and liver, draining the “ill humours of the body . . . to breed good bloud. "
99 " Crockett was born in the “state of Franklin,” a state that was not legally a state. It had declared its independence from North Carolina in 1784 and remained unrecognized. Franklin was later incorporated into Tennessee and became a battleground "
100 " When Winthrop defended the colony, he wanted to create a religious community that would be saved from the “corrupted” bastions of learning, Oxford and Cambridge. "