Kehinde Wiley

Undergirding so much of the discourse surrounding resentment in America right now is the conversation about race. While the notion of “blackness” is often at the forefront of such discussions, the idea of “whiteness” is frequently left unexamined. In her surprising new book, Isenberg goes into the history of how the “white trash” identity is directly related to social caste and economic realities that are perpetually unacknowledged in American castings of itself, its character and its history. White Trash is at once informative, painful and enlightening in how complex our obsession with social-standing-by-virtue-of-color has evolved.