![]() ![]() Fear led to much worse than ridicule, as a generation of American historians have explored. White Trash chronicles polemics about degenerates – feared as pollutants that weakened the nation. This measure was rejected, but Southern legislators would notoriously embrace eugenic principles and sterilisation by the middle of the next century. In 1849, Texas legislators contemplated a measure to castrate criminals, reflecting the urge to stamp out undesirable bloodlines. The term “cracker” appeared in British documents as early as the 1760s, and 19th-century leaders railed against the gaunt, toothless tumbleweed of a people with “lubber’s blood”, blaming sloth and deformity on inbreeding. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” ![]() Johnson would later observe: “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. The land war for the West (aka the Civil War) underscored such issues and during Reconstruction, the “twin evils of poverty and vagrancy” nurtured even worse race and class divides. If you did not exploit the land entrepreneurially, you were mere occupants: “lubbers” were identified and mocked. ![]() The first third of the book provides an erudite romp as Isenberg schools us on how settlers within North America who were detached from land ownership were viewed as “beggarly spawn”. ![]() Nancy Isenberg’s historical treatise about class in America offers rich insights into current political fault lines. ![]()
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