Newitz on white trash studies

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Dec 30 12:28:05 PST 1999


[Annalee Newitz responds to Yoshie...]

Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1999 12:18:32 -0600 From: Annalee Newitz <annalee at gettingit.com>


>Post-affirmative action racism has affected (very loosely defined) leftist
>discourse as well, and conflicts emerged between leftists who criticize
>post-affirmative action racism and those who end up collaborating with it:
>"abolitionists" like Roediger versus proponents of "white trash studies"
>like Annalee Newitz

I'm constantly confused about what "white trash studies" is supposed to be, and why I'm credited with creating it. The book I edited, called White Trash, is part of a field that people like Roediger have helped to create -- this field has loosely been termed "whiteness studies." My book is about the deep connection between race and class within white communities and in historically white-dominated cultures such as the United States. There is no "white trash studies," unless by that you mean the study of class -- specifically the underclass -- within the study of whiteness.

But I suspect you're confusing my work with that of pop culture types such as the folks who dashed off the White Trash Cookbook, or Lisa Carver, who happily celebrate the cultural importance of spam, and imagine that living in a trailer is somehow fun or liberating. As for myself, although I enjoy pop culture, I don't confuse it with reality, where as far as I know being called white trash is still an insult, and being poor still sucks, regardless of whether you're white or not.

Finally, setting up my work (and the work of my WT co-editor Matt Wray) against Roediger's is fine -- I have been critical of some of Roediger's statements, and *very* critical of "Race Traitor." But it seems to me you're misunderstanding the source of our differences. My quibbles with Roediger have to do with certain essentialist claims that he and other white abolitionists have made -- see my essay in White Trash for more details. However, I consider myself very much in solidarity with Roediger's project to dismantle white privilege, excavate the real history of how whiteness has been constructed in this country, and to separate actual lived racial experience from nostalgia, media stereotypes, or sheer fantasy.

Annalee - - - Annalee Newitz - Senior Editor GettingIt <http://www.gettingit.com> annalee at gettingit.com - 415.956.1117



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