Kent Russell

“It’s an old term, “white trash,” older than the United States of America itself. Its roots lie in the seventeenth century, when “lubbers” and “crackers,” these formerly indentured and escaped white servants, formed their own communities on the outskirts of the Chesapeake tidewater region. These whites flouted the colonists’ nascent cultural mold, disrespected their ideas of property, color, and labor. The mass of men thought them boondock curios, except during political and economic crises, when they considered them criminal savages. “White trash” nowadays is a contemptuous term. It implies that one had all the privileges of whiteness but squandered them; one’s poverty is one’s own fault. It’s a shocking term, because it suggests that even without unions and factories, class in America is real, and it cuts across racial lines. But mostly it’s a useful term, because it has no set definition. It’s protean. It’s for when the majority of white people want to delineate what they are by saying, “What we are not is them.”
― Kent Russell, I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son

“I did not hear your name when they were beating up for volunteers.… I am sorry to think I have raised a timid son.”
― Kent Russell, I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son