off the top: it'd be nice if some of the participants in this discussion actually went out and read some research about "the people" in order to figure out what they think and why. hey...not asking that you go bowling with them or anything, but maybe it would help if you took as as much interest in that as you do about how wall streeters think or opinions about abortion you might have an epiphany. go look up all the work done in this area to answer the friggin questions you're aksing and --voila!!-- you might actually have something to think about instead of examining and comparing the lint you've discovered in your navels.
okay. yes. i --and some other "working class' imbeciles on this list--am pissed off by these discussions.
i'm tired of educating everyone. i don't know how many times i've typed about this topic. and yet it gets brought up over and over. i'll give you a bibliography. 'kay?
>period when the "underclass" of the population of colonial powers of
>western europe served as a first wave of occupation. They were viewed as
>trash, put in chains or indentured and "shipped". How does it serve the
>left to deny the valueable lessons that a history like that can provide?
>
>Martin
as far as i can tell, it threatens some people to start thinking of the process as one of racialization. why it's such a problem to recognize bring the focus to the much neglected ways in which whites have been raced in various ways is beyond me.
white trash, yoshie, is a very real category. you missed the gun control debates and "why are 'the people' apathetic debates where we got treated fairly regularly to the "those [white trash, redneck, hicks]" are gun toting racist sexist nationalist patriotic big swinging dick homophobes -- and are totally fucked because they don't know where their "real" interests lie. [hell...oh wait...i'm getting treated to much the same right now! fuckinA]
but here's some anecdoatage. 1.my asshole neighbor told the apt complex mgr why he lied to the cops about me and why he doesn't like me. it's because i am obviously intelligent and have quite a vocabulary which he finds intimidating. [huh.] oh and it bugs him that, if this the case, then why am i living in a low income apt complex. white chick + education....confounds his understanding of how the world is supposed to work -- which makes me, here in the south, 'white trash' [actually around here it's cracker] -- lacking in ambition, etc and so on. [he, like a lot of people including my own mother, don't understand what it means and what it takes to write a dissertaion and actually kill the thing. they think typing and reading isn't "real' work. oh well.]
2. i joined the neighborhood watch which, around here, is the closest thing we have to community oversight of the sizzlean -- stop crime but make sure the sizzlean don't get out of hand [and they're out of hand around here. btw, katha, max, doug, michael p, michael h., ted, etc -- case dismissed. i'm outta that mess thanks to slick esquire.] every other wk we meet. most of the folks are black, cuban, puerto rican, mexican. regular discussion of "those white trash crackers in building 6, 11 and 14 who are cheating the system, have no manners, are dirty and uncouth and not good church going citizens."
3. yesterday there were 7 --count 'em SEVEN--cruisers sitting at the entrance to the complex. a couple of white kids were in trouble. long line of cars trying to get out of complex but held up. so we're milling about, yakking and--woah-- lots of commentary, again, about those white trash crackers who don't care for their kids, the parents party too much, are selfish, etc.
i explain all this to myself this-a-way: in the very first place, the hegemonic discourse of am. individualism means that, when confronted with an anomaly [white and poor] people explain it away by reference to moral failure. it is particularly confounding to people of color to see poor white people because it calls into question their not particularly well-articulated or fully crystallized understanding of why people of color don't get anywhere. [i can give refs to the relevant research on this topic if anyone would like.. but there's lots of good stuff out there]
also, i'll bet you a grand that the apt complex folks screened applications in such a way as to accept mostly people of color that they considered "upwardly mobile" and gave a lot of the slots for low and moderate income folks to whites. i'm also in florida and only learning about this whole dynamic. i understand the "white trash" [redneck, hick] discourse that is specific to upstate new york --another ball of was, though certainly related [not unlike the ways in which blacks sometimes call other blacks pejorative names to distinguish those who possess markers of upward mobility [see also 'don't want no scrub' and 'don't want no pigeons' -- faves among the pre-teen testosterone laden crowd around here; see also wm j wilson's 'the disappearance of work' and eli anderson's 'streetwise' and an atlantic monthly article, 'code of the streets' (oh and 'hidden injuries of class' for the classic discussion)]
steamed, baked, boiled, fried and pissed off kelley