Newitz on white trash studies

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>[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.

The "underclass" is not a valid category for leftist social analysis either
(unless one examines it only to point out how the concept is used by
ideologues).  That is an ideological category employed in racist and often
anti-urban discourse and stands in sharp contrast to the Marxist
understanding of class.

Yoshie