“We Ain’t Nothing but White Trash”. The Ethnography of Poor Whites and the Politics of Stigma in Zora Neale Hurston’s Seraph on the Suwanee.

This article aims to demonstrate the documentary value of Zora Neale, Hurston’s descriptions, in her novel Seraph on the Suwanee, of the condition of the poor white US Southerners known as “crackers.” By, depicting a “cracker” woman’s upward social trajectory through, marriage, Hurston reveals the social and existential reality of this, segment of the white population. Her novel presents an objective, analysis of the crackers as a socio-historical group distinct from other, whites. However, Hurston also explores the subjective side of belonging to this discredited group by offering an account of her heroine’s experience of stigmatization.

Racism as Delusion: A Buddhist Perspective

The powerful novel Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko combines several uncomfortable truths from the perspective of a young Native American who has returned home after World War II: the theft of Native American land, the manipulations that set poor whites against poor Indians (among others) and the effects of these lies on the hearts of white people, who tried and still try to fill up their hollowness with money, technology and patriotic war. However, as Silko emphasizes, the lies do not work. Not only have we white folk been fooling ourselves, but we also know that we have been fooling ourselves, and the consequences of our self-deceptions continue to haunt all of us. This essay is an attempt to say more about how that collective delusion functions—in particular, to understand the emptiness that patriotism never quite fills up, the hollowness that wealth and consumerism cannot glut. In order to do this, I will offer a (not “the”) Buddhist perspective, so we begin with some basic Buddhist teachings, which are quite different from the Abrahamic (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) traditions more familiar to most of us.

“Crashing to Bits”

Chapter 3 considers the myriad nature of southern memoir, with particular focus on the anti-racist work of Lillian Smith. Published in a decade replete with southerners writing about the South, including W. J. Cash’s The Mind of the South, William Percy’s Lanterns on the Levee, and Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Lillian Smith’s Killers of the Dream confronts southern paternalism in a stark, direct manner. Specifically, Smith responds to many of her contemporaries by presenting the South not as a romantic site of gentility, but rather as a psychologically traumatizing hellscape, one replete with specters of violence perpetrated against blacks as well as paternalistic control levied against women and poor whites. This chapter contextualizes Smith alongside these other writers, with primary focus on Percy's nostalgia and romanticization of southern gentility, as well as his disdain for poor whites, whom he derides as scoundrels and markedly inferior versions of whiteness.

Peculiar Whiteness

Peculiar Whiteness argues for deeper consideration of the complexities surrounding the disparate treatment of poor whites throughout southern literature and attests to how broad such experiences have been. While the history of prejudice against this group is not the same as the legacy of violence perpetrated against people of color in America, individuals regarded as ‘white trash’ have suffered a dehumanizing process in the writings of various white authors. Poor white characters are frequently maligned as grotesque and anxiety-inducing, especially when they are aligned in close proximity to blacks or with other troubling conditions such as physical difference. Thus, as a symbol, much has been asked of poor whites, and various iterations of the label (e.g., ‘white trash,’ tenant farmers, or even people with a little less money than average) have been subject to a broad spectrum of judgment, pity, compassion, fear, and anxiety. Peculiar Whiteness engages key issues in contemporary critical race studies, whiteness studies, and southern studies, both literary and historical. Through discussions of authors including Charles Chesnutt, Thomas Dixon, Erskine Caldwell, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor, the book analyzes how we see how whites in a position of power work to maintain their status, often by finding ways to re-categorize and marginalize people who might not otherwise have seemed to fall under the auspices or boundaries of ‘white trash.’

“It Aint Nothing But Jest Another Snopes”

This chapter investigates how William Faulkner presented poor whites and white trash across his oeuvre, with particular emphasis on his fairly unheralded Snopes trilogy. The chapter charts how poor whites are presented in different eras of his writings, from As I Lay Dying until the final Snopes novel published shortly before his death. While Faulkner is well known for his attempts at discussing the evolving racial situation in the South since the end of the Civil War, most critics have considered his depiction of whiteness as fairly homogeneous, a fact that this chapter's sustained focus on the Snopeses seeks to complicate. In short, while the Snopeses are frequently villainous characters, they are still met with language that stigmatizes them as a racial other, and as an inferior form of whiteness to the more well-to-do denizens of Yoknapatawpha.

Tom and Friends

Chapter 1 locates the treatment of poor whites in the new plantation tradition of post-Reconstruction southern literature, with especial focus on Thomas Dixon’s work, his respondent Sutton Griggs, and Charles Chesnutt, whose 1905 novel The Colonel’s Dream analyses the ascendance of poor whites into formerly bourgeois spaces. Focusing on Dixon, the chapter discusses how racial anxiety relates to the myths surrounding the protection of white womanhood during the Lost Cause era, while also revealing that, for all of Dixon’s pronouncements regarding white unity, a closer look at his work reveals a fundamental disdain for poor whites that, while lacking the outright violence against blacks we see in his works, nevertheless bears a resemblance to the racist language meted out against blacks. Analysis of Sutton Griggs, whose novel The Hindered Hand responds to Dixon directly, further challenges the latter's racist assumptions.

Introduction

The introduction contextualizes the current state of whiteness studies and southern literary studies and argues that considering these lines of criticism alongside one another results in a more complete understanding of the underlying assumptions that have been made about poor whites and those deemed 'white trash.' In addition to analysing the history of the term, the introduction considers recent developments in southern studies scholarship, especially ways in which scholars have sought to expand recent definitions of the term “South.” The chapter also discusses the history of whiteness studies and argues that increased attention to the attitudes that middle- and upper-class whites have had toward poor whites is a fruitful line of scholarship. Finally, the introduction provides an early focus on the works of Erskine Caldwell and Flannery O'Connor as representative authors who complicate ideas that whiteness is homogeneous and universal.

Maimed Souls

The conclusion gestures toward hope for the future of studies regarding poor whites and white trash, noting that work remains to be done, especially in the way that mental or physical disability is often presented as a form of inferior whiteness. Flannery O'Connor's work, for example, gestures toward the importance of these issues. In the closing pages, the conclusion also expresses hope that new avenues of southern literature, such as the rise of Asian American authors writing about the South, receives increased attention. Finally, the conclusion considers the 2016 election and the attention paid to the rural and urban divide and its relationship to how contemporary discourse considers poor whites as a racial other. It closes by noting that the idea that prejudice against poor whites is strictly a southern phenomenon has been complicated in recent years, and that both southern studies and whiteness studies are continually evolving fields of inquiry.

Racial Passing and the Eurasian Question in Kipling's Kim

The hero of Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim is an orphaned European boy who ‘goes native’, blending in among Europeans and Indian natives alike. Although Kim is said to be the son of an Irish sergeant, it is far likelier that a child of Kim's class origins would have been mixed-race. In addition to the economic constraints and lack of social status that afflicted poor whites in India, this article also examines the novel against the backdrop of the colonial authorities’ efforts in British India to resolve the ‘Eurasian Question’. It argues that, though Kipling's depiction of the European orphan who can pass for a native is problematic, it nevertheless betrays deep-rooted anxieties about the racial and cultural hierarchies that legitimated the colonial project. Indeed, the ambiguities of the novel lead Kipling to open the door to such ideas as that the ‘Oriental’ traits of his hero are superior to those of his characteristics that could be regarded as Western. Kipling's selective view of his novel's economic and cultural context cannot avoid giving rise to readings that contradict and undermine the determination to justify the imperial project.

Managing Difference: White Parenting Practices in Socioeconomically Diverse Neighborhoods

Drawing on 40 interviews with white parents in two mixed-income neighborhoods—one that is majority-white and the other that is multiracial—this article examines how residence in socioeconomically diverse neighborhoods conditions the parenting practices of middle-class whites, specifically concerning parents’ management of their children’s contact with the poor. The data reveal that white parents in both neighborhoods work to ensure symbolic and spatial distance between their children and their poor neighbors resulting in distinctive patterns of micro-segregation in each neighborhood. However, how parents engage in this work depends on the race of their neighbors and the block-level geography of their community. I find that parents deploy more contact-avoidant practices toward their poor white rather than their poor black neighbors. Among participants, poor whites conjure feelings of disgust and are actively avoided, whereas poor black residents provoke feelings of ambivalence, as contact with them is judged to be both valuable and threatening.