Anthony Tilghman

“Good white liberals tend to use the fact of a black middle class (sometimes unconsciously, but other times explicitly and consciously) to affirm their belief that the basic structure of liberal society is just and fair. In contrast to the black middle class, however, the existence of white trash threatens both white liberal ideals of opportunity and white liberal assumptions of openness to and acceptance of people who are different than oneself. White trash are not able to perform the same reassuring roles for white liberals as the black middle class, and so white liberals can tend to be more comfortable around black middle-class people than they are around white trash.”
― Shannon Sullivan, Good White People: The Problem with Middle-Class White Anti-Racism