![]() ![]() "There was no clear path to land and riches among the lower ranks," Isenberg writes of antebellum Americans. The myth of upward mobility did not concern early Americans, and the vastness of the continent provided a ready alternative for the poor. We only took greater strides than European nations to keep those structures out of sight. We may have ditched Debrett's, and the shape of our class structure may have been different, but we did not really eliminate class structures, nor their political and cultural significance. ![]() ![]() I noted how she reaches back to the colonial era and the founding to demonstrate that, despite our national myths to the contrary, Americans did not really break from British ideas about class. Yesterday, I began my review of Nancy Isenberg's important new book White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. ![]()
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