Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Author Isenberg on New Book on Class: 'White Trash' (Audio)

Transcript

Author Isenberg on New Book on Class: 'White Trash' (Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Global business news twenty four hours a day at Bloomberg
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: dot Com, the radio, plus Globo LA and on your radio.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: This is a Bloomberg Business Flash from Bloomberg World Headquarters.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I'm Katherine Cowdery. Commodity producers and lenders led US docks
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: lower after comments from Bank of England Governor Mark Kearney.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: We kindle concerns that Britain's withdrawal from the European Union
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: will further weigh on tepid global growth. Energy and financial
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: shares were among the biggest losers, with investors showing a
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: preference for Haven's Equity. Declines and higher volatility reflected some
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: of the anxiety seeing during a two days sell off
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: following the Brexit vote. We check the markets every fifteen minutes.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Now Industrial Average down one hundred nine point six tents
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: of a percent. It closed at seventeen thousand, eight hundred forty,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: narrowing earlier losses. SMP five hundred down fourteen points two
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: thirds of a percent to two thousand eighty eight. Then
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: AZZAC fell forty points seven eighths of a percent to
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: forty eight twenty two West exist in a media Crude
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: oil down two dollars nineteen cents of carrel four an
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: a half percent of forty six eighty one is about
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: gold up nineteen dollar seventy cents announced at thirteen fifty
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: eight seventy and the tenure treasure got twenty thirty seconds
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: with the yield of one point three seven And that's
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: a Bloomberg Business flash. You're listening to Taking the Stock
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: with Kathleen Hayes and Pim Fox on Bloomberg Radio. As
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: we celebrated the fourth of July weekend, many of us lauded,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: appreciated our class. Free society or liberty and hard work
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: are meant to ensure real social mobility. Our next guest
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: is here to tell us, well, not so fast. Class
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: is a much bigger issue not only the history of
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: the United States and our democracy, but also alive and
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: well in our political system. As two presumptive candidates vy
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: for the White Excuse me the White House Yes in November.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: The new book that Nancy Iszenberg has written is White Trash,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: The four year untold History of Class in America. She's
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: an author, a professor of American history at Louisia State
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Louisiana State University, and Nancy because I want to get
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: to the book. I'm not going to give them all
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: your other credits and accomplishments. But white trash. Who is
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: white trash? And where does this where does this question
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: of what role this group plays come in to American history? Well,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: first of all, if we think of the word white trash,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: we know was first in newspaper print in the eighteen twenties,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: but it has a much longer history. And what I
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: began to explore is that it goes all the way
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: back to British colonization. Because from the very first, and
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: this is one of the points I make, is we imagine,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: at the time of the Revolution, we escaped the class system,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: we broke free from Great Britain, but we didn't break
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: free from the ideas about class and poverty. So the
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: British when they imagined colonization, they thought of the New
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: World not as the city upon the hill, but is
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: a large trash heap, a dumping ground where they could
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: unload the idle poor. And the people who actually came
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: to the New World were not if we think of
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: the pure to and seeking the majority seeking religious liberty,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: most of them were coming for economic reasons. So not
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: only did we have the rise of slavery, which we
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: know was a form of unfree labor, but we had
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: large numbers of convict laborers, we had indentured servants, we
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: had Irish rebels, we had the children of beggars. And
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: that's why I think, I think one of the most
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: disturbing things when we go back and realize how children,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: particularly young boys, were the major form of labor to
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: be exploited, and most of these people were with an
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: indentured contract. It could go anywhere from seven to nine years.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: And if you think about the horrible conditions in Virginia
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: at that time, most people would not even live to adulthood.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: So we have to imagine that from the very beginning.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: White trash goes back to the term that was used
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: by British colonization waste people, and for Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Abigail Adams, their word of choice was rubbish. So one
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: of the things I've paid attention to is the tech taxonomy,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: the language, and how each generation creates a set of
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: terms to talk about the poor and to talk about
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: how the poor are seen as trapped in this class,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: trapped in this class, and that unfortunately leads us to
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: the idea that if they're trapped, we can't really help them.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Charities pointless, and we have to realize that it's also
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: connected to our rural history, that for over half of
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: our history we were in a grarian nation and the
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: language of class was also tied to land. You talk
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: about it being one giant workhouse. That's your description of
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: the United States, that it's founding right because at the time,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: if we think about the fifteen hundreds, when one of
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: the key figures I talk about is Richard Hacklett, who
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: was the foremost, foremost promoter of British colonization. He wrote
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: the pitch to Queen Elizabeth. He's one who said that
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: this is the destiny England has to get in the
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: business along with the Spanish and the Dutch and think
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: about colonization. But when if we look carefully on on
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: what's going on in Great Britain at this time, this
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: is when they're beginning to establish workhouses. This is where
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: they're beginning to think of how where are we going
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: to put the poor um And even we could take
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: it back to the fourteen hundreds, where the British had
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: already waged a long standing war against the poor. Well,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: you would think then if in essences in Dutch white uh,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: you know, Caucasian European indentured servants were slaves. In effect,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: you would think that freed slaves after the Civil War,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: that these two groups would have had a natural affinity,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: but in fact they didn't. Is that your argument into
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: a sense that they were pitted against each other, and
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: that has led to a lot of the class and
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: racial issues we have today. It goes both ways. I mean,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: if you look at the Antebellum South, for example, poor
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: whites and slaves created an underground system of trade which
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: subverted the power of the plant or elite um and
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: well into the twentieth century, they would live side by
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: side and they would have relationships. But where they are
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: pitted against each other comes out of politics, and I
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: focus a lot particularly if we look at the way
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: in which the Confederacy itself said that, well, non slaveholders
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: and the poor are going to be willing to fight
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: for the Confederacy because if they don't, they're going to
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: drop down to the level of free black. So they
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: use that as a taunt. They use that as a
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: threat that gets revived again during reconstruction, Jim Crow, and
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: well into the early twentieth century. I want, I'm glad
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: to bring us to the early twentieth century because you
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: also mentioned a very famous Supreme Court case Buck versus Bell,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: and I just want to give you about thirty seconds
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: to tell us why that's relevant. Why that's relevant is
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: that one of the other key themes. If I said
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: land is important and waste people were the landlist, the
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: other important theme is breeding, and this comes from animal husbandry,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: and it also lays the foundation for eugenics. And in fact,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: what we have forgotten and about Buck Fevale is that
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: carry Buck was selected as a candidate for sterilization, which
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: was part of the eugenics movement. In one states had
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: sterilization laws. On the book, she was selected because she
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: was seen as a perfect specimen of white trash um
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: and that this group, particularly women, poor white women, were
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: seen as a group. They first said we should put
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: them the asylums during their refertil years, but it was
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: cheaper to have them sterilized and then returned them to
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: the labor forces as menial workers. Thank you very much
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: for sharing your thoughts and congratulations on your new book.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Nancy Eisenberg, White Trash, the four hundred year untold history
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: of class in America. This is Bloomberg coming up. Bloomberg
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Law brought to you by a Bank of America. Mary
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Lynch saying what others have seen, but uncovering what others
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: may not. Global research that helps you harness disruption for
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: the top global research firm, five years running, Mary Lynch, Pierce,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Fedner and Smith, Incorporated,