Over the summer, I read “White Trash: The 400 Year Untold History of Class in America,” and I am so recommending that all the terribly-misinformed-about-their own-histories-USAers read this book, cover to cover, right away, like, now!
While I’ve taken a position not to weigh in with words on the Trump presidency, (for a variety of reasons but mostly to avoid redundancy), I do think that this book, regardless of that creep Trump (or the former “deporter and chief” Obama, for that matter), may help the flag-waving citizens of the republic understand why Ellison’s final sentence of his brilliant Invisible Man is among the most important in U.S. literature in relation to race and politics.
“Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you,” asks the diasporic African protagonist of the novel, reminding the so-called Whites (and their pathetic imitators) that their specific ancestors were not likely to have occupied lounge chairs on the Mayflower, or, for that matter, that they were not simply freedom seekers, religious or otherwise, but that they were more likely to have come reluctantly, as likely, or more likely, part of those European classes forced to work in relation to African (and other enslaved peoples) as indentured servants, perhaps even descendants of the convicts dumped in the new world indeed to “slave” as part of their punishment.
I mean, seriously, if all was good in Europe, and you were living a happy and secure life, would you have braved a death defying voyage to an assumed uncivilized land to be ravaged by assumed savages?