"White Trash" Historian Nancy Isenberg on J.D. Vance, "Hillbilly Elegy" & Class in America
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American historian and the author of White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, Nancy Isenberg, calls Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance a peddler of the "self-made man myth." Isenberg criticizes Hilbilly Elegy, the memoir that propelled him to fame, as a deceptive way of selling this myth and the conservative politics it comes with. "Much of what his memoir says tells us nothing about real class conditions," Isenberg says, pointing to her own historical and sociological research on the rural poor in the United States.
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Transcript
Search in video
0:00
this is democracy Now democracynow.org
0:02
War peace in the presidency breaking
0:05
with convention I'm Amy Goodman with
0:08
Nur we're continuing to look at Donald
0:10
Trump's running mate Ohio Senator J
0:12
devance who first gained Fame after he
0:15
wrote his Memoir hillbilly elegy we're
0:18
joined by Nancy Eisenberg she's an
0:21
American historian and the author of The
0:23
award- Winning book White Trash the
0:26
400-year untold history of class in
0:29
America she wrote a widely cited review
0:32
of hillbilly elegy for the New York
0:34
Review of Books in 2018 headlined Left
0:38
Behind she's professor emeritus of
0:41
history at uh Louisiana State University
0:44
Welcome to democracy now it's great to
0:46
have you with us Nancy Eisenberg um when
0:50
President Trump named JD Vance as the
0:55
Vice Presidential nominee as his pick to
0:58
be vice president if if he wins can you
1:01
talk about your response informed by
1:04
your response to hillbilly
1:08
elegy yeah hi um I wasn't completely
1:12
surprised because I did write a review
1:16
that I think didn't go along with the
1:18
general uh chatting class
1:21
consensus that this that hillbilly
1:24
elergy was somehow a revelation or told
1:28
us the truth about the people who were
1:30
supporting Trump um I'm more skeptical I
1:33
was skeptical from the beginning because
1:36
Memoirs are about self-fashioning the
1:39
strongest message in hillbilly allergy
1:41
which is the one that was echoed uh last
1:45
night at the Republican convention is
1:47
the self-made man myth this is the myth
1:50
that somehow America creates
1:53
opportunities and just like Benjamin
1:55
Franklin you can fashion yourself and
1:57
you can rise the letter latter to
2:00
success and this is very much something
2:03
that JD Vance I think believes in um it
2:06
is a part of his Memoir but much of what
2:10
his Memoir says tells us nothing about
2:13
real class conditions I mean the person
2:16
you just had on from Politico who talked
2:18
about the Scotch Irish tradition that's
2:20
a myth that was a myth that was
2:22
reinvented in the 1980s by people like
2:25
Grady Whitney who who were trying to
2:27
shift the debate to an ethnic identity
2:30
instead of talking about class and that
2:32
is something that Americans have trouble
2:35
addressing is class divisions and the
2:38
Republicans don't talk about them and
2:40
the Democrats don't talk about them and
2:43
I think this is this is kind of the
2:46
undercurrent of JD Vance and I would say
2:49
on top of everything the reason he was
2:51
chosen and what wasn't mentioned so far
2:54
is because of his youth this has been in
2:56
the news the media everyone's been
2:58
attacking Biden for being too old and
3:00
then Trump is too old so now they pick a
3:03
39-year-old Young Man Who projects
3:06
youthfulness why because it appeals to
3:08
the media that's why he's on the ticket
3:12
and that he had his rise was created by
3:16
the mainstream media it was the liberals
3:18
who embraced him it was the liberals who
3:20
were reading hillbilly elergy
3:23
not
3:26
trumpsters H and so professor n
3:30
Eisenberg if you could uh you know
3:32
explain the argument in your book White
3:35
Trash the 400-year untold history of
3:39
class in America first of all Explain
3:41
the origin of this extraordinary uh
3:43
phrase uh white trash and then what the
3:47
myths are about class and poverty uh
3:51
that pervade American political and
3:53
social life and why you think that's the
3:57
case well my book is challenging the the
4:00
big myth about America which again is
4:02
this the American dream which is
4:04
connected to the self-made men that
4:05
somehow magically at the time of the
4:07
Revolution we broke from Great Britain
4:10
and we eliminated aristocracies we
4:13
eliminated class divisions and somehow
4:16
we were a unique free liberated people
4:19
well none of that is true uh we have
4:23
throughout our history relied heavily on
4:25
English traditions where do you think we
4:26
got our law the common law um and not
4:30
only that the ideologies of class have
4:33
been pervasive in America uh and I think
4:37
this is the the sad thing that we forget
4:39
and the reason that white trash still
4:41
exists today is because it goes all the
4:43
way back to the Colonial period it goes
4:45
back to the Elizabethan period when the
4:49
original purpose on the part of the
4:51
English for
4:53
colonization was to dump the quote waste
4:57
people that's where white trash comes
4:59
from referring to the Expendables the
5:03
people who were hurting the economy in
5:06
Great Britain dump them into the
5:09
colonies uh and get rid of the rubbish
5:12
that's the term that Thomas Jefferson
5:13
used he referred to raked from the
5:15
rubbish so trash literally means trash
5:19
and if you can think of any negative
5:21
connotation associated with waste that
5:24
was part of the rhetoric as well and our
5:26
class system what we also don't
5:30
understand this was very much a rural
5:31
notion because waste not only means
5:34
rubbish it means waste lands and this is
5:37
a part of the common law but this is the
5:39
idea of unfallow unplowed unproductive
5:43
land um and these are the terminologies
5:47
that provide the foundation for talking
5:51
about white trash and our class system
5:54
and this term has evolved over time uh
5:57
they referred to as crackers squatter
6:00
they are people who are trespassers
6:02
criminals crackers comes from crack
6:04
brained which attacks their intellectual
6:07
abilities so every negative kind of
6:10
Association that you can attach to a
6:13
group that has been applied to people
6:16
who fall under this rubric and we also
6:19
have to distinguish white trash does
6:21
include all people who are poor
6:23
struggling there are more refined
6:25
distinctions so even to this day there's
6:27
a distinction among Americans in more
6:30
rural areas and particularly in the
6:32
South a distinction between white trash
6:35
and rednecks rednecks are hardworking
6:38
their necks are red because they're
6:39
burnt from the Sun they were associated
6:41
with living in the swamps in the South
6:44
um hillbilly is a very distinctive term
6:46
people from the hills
6:49
that in a sense is it is all linking
6:52
people to specific
6:55
regions specific kinds of land and this
6:59
is important when we we erase all of
7:02
this because we think that Americans are
7:04
detached from the land well property is
7:06
still the most important source of
7:08
wealth and I think we need to remember
7:11
that white trash is still with us we
7:15
have Modern Trailer Trash we have these
7:18
terms that are still thrown around but
7:20
just changing the language isn't going
7:22
to get rid of the class divisions and
7:24
that's where I think Liberals are really
7:25
at fault you can't just rewrite the
7:28
language which his historians have done
7:30
they refer to people moving West as
7:32
squatters and eliminating the terms that
7:34
were used at the time I mean as settlers
7:37
instead of squatters and crackers so we
7:39
have to kind of face the fact that class
7:42
divisions are real uh and that there are
7:46
distinctions we can't just think of the
7:48
urban poor is exactly same as the rural
7:53
poor well uh Professor Heisenberg if you
7:56
could speak I mean there is the question
7:59
uh uh of white trash that is to say not
8:02
only uh in economic terms uh poor white
8:05
people uh but also uh black and latinx
8:11
people uh the vast I mean in terms of
8:13
percentages of
8:15
populations uh by race and ethnicity uh
8:18
in 2022 177% of black people in the US
8:23
were living below the poverty line
8:25
compared to uh 88.6% of white people so
8:30
there is a a massive intersection of
8:33
race and poverty if you could talk about
8:36
that and how this figures in the whole
8:39
conversation about class in the
8:41
US yeah I think but that statistic
8:44
distorts things because the population
8:46
size of people who are classified as
8:49
white is much larger so there's
8:52
widespread white poverty and poverty
8:55
shifts I mean depending on what region
8:57
what area of the the country you're in
9:01
and there is uh black rural po poverty
9:04
as there is white rural poverty but I
9:07
think one of the problems we have with
9:10
this whole discussion and I think other
9:12
and other Scholars have noticed this
9:14
often uh educated liberal Elites look at
9:19
have seen poverty as simply a black
9:21
issue well it's not um and I think that
9:24
we have to and this comes from the 60s
9:26
from the idea of reducing everything to
9:30
uh the urban
9:32
context that we have to sort of
9:35
recognize that if we go back in time one
9:38
of the things that's quite striking is
9:41
that the relationship between poor
9:43
whites and poor blacks was much closer
9:46
than between poor whites and the
9:48
aristocratic white elite who look down
9:51
on poor whites poor whites and poor
9:54
blacks often live next to each other
9:57
they engaged in tra relations with each
10:00
other
10:02
so we have to sort of recognize that
10:04
poverty can have similar consequences
10:08
for these two groups uh and I'd also say
10:11
the whole term poor white trash was also
10:14
something that blacks used to describe
10:16
poor whites um and when I went on my
10:18
book tour uh for white trash uh many
10:23
black Americans you know understood the
10:26
story quite well where I think for
10:27
Liberal Elites it's it's much more
10:31
incomprehensible or surprising to them
10:34
so I think we we can't kind of reduce or
10:38
return to one of the political
10:40
strategies of the South where Elites
10:43
would try to increase the tensions
10:46
between black and white and create a
10:48
sense of competition and this goes back
10:51
to the Confederacy you know when they
10:53
had to appeal to poor whites to make
10:55
sure that they would join the
10:57
Confederacy and be Canon f
11:00
they had to make the argument that if
11:02
they don't support the Confederacy that
11:05
free blacks are somehow going to be
11:07
elevated above them and this is
11:09
something that is still to today is this
11:11
idea of inciting competition between two
11:14
groups this is what Trump does when he
11:16
incites competition between immigrants
11:19
uh and supposedly you know poor whites
11:23
or middle class Americans
===
Transcript
Search in video
this is democracy Now democracynow.org
War peace in the presidency breaking
with convention I'm Amy Goodman with
Nur we're continuing to look at Donald
Trump's running mate Ohio Senator J
devance who first gained Fame after he
wrote his Memoir hillbilly elegy we're
joined by Nancy Eisenberg she's an
American historian and the author of The
award- Winning book White Trash the
400-year untold history of class in
America she wrote a widely cited review
of hillbilly elegy for the New York
Review of Books in 2018 headlined Left
Behind she's professor emeritus of
history at uh Louisiana State University
Welcome to democracy now it's great to
have you with us Nancy Eisenberg um when
President Trump named JD Vance as the
Vice Presidential nominee as his pick to
be vice president if if he wins can you
talk about your response informed by
your response to hillbilly
elegy yeah hi um I wasn't completely
surprised because I did write a review
that I think didn't go along with the
general uh chatting class
consensus that this that hillbilly
elergy was somehow a revelation or told
us the truth about the people who were
supporting Trump um I'm more skeptical I
was skeptical from the beginning because
Memoirs are about self-fashioning the
strongest message in hillbilly allergy
which is the one that was echoed uh last
night at the Republican convention is
the self-made man myth this is the myth
that somehow America creates
opportunities and just like Benjamin
Franklin you can fashion yourself and
you can rise the letter latter to
success and this is very much something
that JD Vance I think believes in um it
is a part of his Memoir but much of what
his Memoir says tells us nothing about
real class conditions I mean the person
you just had on from Politico who talked
about the Scotch Irish tradition that's
a myth that was a myth that was
reinvented in the 1980s by people like
Grady Whitney who who were trying to
shift the debate to an ethnic identity
instead of talking about class and that
is something that Americans have trouble
addressing is class divisions and the
Republicans don't talk about them and
the Democrats don't talk about them and
I think this is this is kind of the
undercurrent of JD Vance and I would say
on top of everything the reason he was
chosen and what wasn't mentioned so far
is because of his youth this has been in
the news the media everyone's been
attacking Biden for being too old and
then Trump is too old so now they pick a
39-year-old Young Man Who projects
youthfulness why because it appeals to
the media that's why he's on the ticket
and that he had his rise was created by
the mainstream media it was the liberals
who embraced him it was the liberals who
were reading hillbilly elergy
not
trumpsters H and so professor n
Eisenberg if you could uh you know
explain the argument in your book White
Trash the 400-year untold history of
class in America first of all Explain
the origin of this extraordinary uh
phrase uh white trash and then what the
myths are about class and poverty uh
that pervade American political and
social life and why you think that's the
case well my book is challenging the the
big myth about America which again is
this the American dream which is
connected to the self-made men that
somehow magically at the time of the
Revolution we broke from Great Britain
and we eliminated aristocracies we
eliminated class divisions and somehow
we were a unique free liberated people
well none of that is true uh we have
throughout our history relied heavily on
English traditions where do you think we
got our law the common law um and not
only that the ideologies of class have
been pervasive in America uh and I think
this is the the sad thing that we forget
and the reason that white trash still
exists today is because it goes all the
way back to the Colonial period it goes
back to the Elizabethan period when the
original purpose on the part of the
English for
colonization was to dump the quote waste
people that's where white trash comes
from referring to the Expendables the
people who were hurting the economy in
Great Britain dump them into the
colonies uh and get rid of the rubbish
that's the term that Thomas Jefferson
used he referred to raked from the
rubbish so trash literally means trash
and if you can think of any negative
connotation associated with waste that
was part of the rhetoric as well and our
class system what we also don't
understand this was very much a rural
notion because waste not only means
rubbish it means waste lands and this is
a part of the common law but this is the
idea of unfallow unplowed unproductive
land um and these are the terminologies
that provide the foundation for talking
about white trash and our class system
and this term has evolved over time uh
they referred to as crackers squatter
they are people who are trespassers
criminals crackers comes from crack
brained which attacks their intellectual
abilities so every negative kind of
Association that you can attach to a
group that has been applied to people
who fall under this rubric and we also
have to distinguish white trash does
include all people who are poor
struggling there are more refined
distinctions so even to this day there's
a distinction among Americans in more
rural areas and particularly in the
South a distinction between white trash
and rednecks rednecks are hardworking
their necks are red because they're
burnt from the Sun they were associated
with living in the swamps in the South
um hillbilly is a very distinctive term
people from the hills
that in a sense is it is all linking
people to specific
regions specific kinds of land and this
is important when we we erase all of
this because we think that Americans are
detached from the land well property is
still the most important source of
wealth and I think we need to remember
that white trash is still with us we
have Modern Trailer Trash we have these
terms that are still thrown around but
just changing the language isn't going
to get rid of the class divisions and
that's where I think Liberals are really
at fault you can't just rewrite the
language which his historians have done
they refer to people moving West as
squatters and eliminating the terms that
were used at the time I mean as settlers
instead of squatters and crackers so we
have to kind of face the fact that class
divisions are real uh and that there are
distinctions we can't just think of the
urban poor is exactly same as the rural
poor well uh Professor Heisenberg if you
could speak I mean there is the question
uh uh of white trash that is to say not
only uh in economic terms uh poor white
people uh but also uh black and latinx
people uh the vast I mean in terms of
percentages of
populations uh by race and ethnicity uh
in 2022 177% of black people in the US
were living below the poverty line
compared to uh 88.6% of white people so
there is a a massive intersection of
race and poverty if you could talk about
that and how this figures in the whole
conversation about class in the
US yeah I think but that statistic
distorts things because the population
size of people who are classified as
white is much larger so there's
widespread white poverty and poverty
shifts I mean depending on what region
what area of the the country you're in
and there is uh black rural po poverty
as there is white rural poverty but I
think one of the problems we have with
this whole discussion and I think other
and other Scholars have noticed this
often uh educated liberal Elites look at
have seen poverty as simply a black
issue well it's not um and I think that
we have to and this comes from the 60s
from the idea of reducing everything to
uh the urban
context that we have to sort of
recognize that if we go back in time one
of the things that's quite striking is
that the relationship between poor
whites and poor blacks was much closer
than between poor whites and the
aristocratic white elite who look down
on poor whites poor whites and poor
blacks often live next to each other
they engaged in tra relations with each
other
so we have to sort of recognize that
poverty can have similar consequences
for these two groups uh and I'd also say
the whole term poor white trash was also
something that blacks used to describe
poor whites um and when I went on my
book tour uh for white trash uh many
black Americans you know understood the
story quite well where I think for
Liberal Elites it's it's much more
incomprehensible or surprising to them
so I think we we can't kind of reduce or
return to one of the political
strategies of the South where Elites
would try to increase the tensions
between black and white and create a
sense of competition and this goes back
to the Confederacy you know when they
had to appeal to poor whites to make
sure that they would join the
Confederacy and be Canon f
they had to make the argument that if
they don't support the Confederacy that
free blacks are somehow going to be
elevated above them and this is
something that is still to today is this
idea of inciting competition between two
groups this is what Trump does when he
incites competition between immigrants
uh and supposedly you know poor whites
or middle class Americans
===
===
===
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