This Is What White Trash Looks Like
The defining characteristic of people labeled “white trash” is that they are poor. They have low levels of financial, educational, and social capital. The overt symptoms of being poor — the clothes they wear, the way they speak, the things they enjoy in life — allow for easy stereotypic discrimination. With discrimination comes the ability to assert relative social superiority. Calling someone “white trash” is a not-so-great form of psychological self-soothing.
But, fuck it, let’s indulge.
The person pictured above is Ivanka Trump. In interviews, she seems intelligent, albeit not extraordinarily so. Yet, because her father’s father was wealthy she may now influence who the United States bombs, without all that tedium of hard-earned foreign policy expertise.
That’s fucking nuts.
Still, I’m compelled to say, “I actually think she’s the best of the Trump’s.” But, why? Because she’s pretty? Because she lies to us on camera while giggling and head-curtsying? Because she verbally expresses admirable virtues — identifying people she identifies with and wants to help — without any risk and with the feeblest of possible follow-throughs?
My compulsion to soften criticism of her makes me fucking nuts.
Ivanka Trump has enjoyed the highest levels of economic, educational, and social capital imaginable. People for whom the “white trash” label applies don’t live in the same reality as Ivanka Trump. Neither do I. But, for some (bad) reason(s), we judge the people with the least by higher standards than those with the most. Not just “more”. Literally, “most” — on a yearly basis, she probably makes more than all of my high-school graduating class combined. Shouldn’t she be so much better than us?
Yes. Of course.
But, can she?
Let me be charitable. Even if she truly and sincerely wanted to do maximal good, she’s limited. Her environment conspires against accurate and precise assessments of decency. She doesn’t know how to help the world at-large because she is not part of it. She never was. The unreality around her constrains what she can do by distorting what she can perceive.
I’ve hoped her capable of more. Credit (or blame) Chelsea Handler who shared her fantasy of an Ivanka who would denounce her father (prior to the election), playing the role of Heroine in our American story. But, it was too fantastic. Could you really denounce your father, in what would be the defining achievement (victory?) of his life? Even if you thought he was the oncoming storm about to lay waste to democracy, the path you see is the one she‘s followed: “let me try to influence him and prevent the worst.” There is no room for heroism in her world. It’s something denuded by the corrosive unreality.
So, no, I sincerely don’t think Ivanka is a bad person. Born to different circumstances (i.e. not the wealthy daughter of Donald Trump), perhaps she would have been a courageous champion of The People her father feigns allegiance to. But she’s not. She can’t be. Not because she is defective, but because people in her position are blind and deaf. Poor people know they are “white trash.” They are reminded, constantly. Rich people “know” they are better, because we tell them they are, constantly. Rather than identifying them as a source of societal garbage, we express fantasies about being in their position — or, being them.
Is it any surprise they then wouldn’t understand how their action and inaction produces suffering? Or, how to help? Or, how to be courageous?
