1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910457355903321

Autore

Moss Kirby

Titolo

The Color of Class : Poor Whites and the Paradox of Privilege / / Kirby Moss

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Philadelphia : , : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2010]

©2003

ISBN

1-283-21112-2

9786613211125

0-8122-0065-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (171 p.)

Disciplina

305.5/69/0973

Soggetti

Poor - United States

Social Classes - United States

SOCIAL SCIENCE

Social Classes

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (pages 143-154) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1 Setting: Midway, U.S.A., an Unassuming City? -- 2 School: Learning to Live Up to the Paragon -- 3 Encounters: Intersections and Collisions -- 4 Income and Work: Making Ends Meet, Barely -- 5 Encounters: Changing Contexts, Changing Characters -- 6 Home: Sheltered by Whiteness -- 7 Encounters: Uncommon Class Commonalities -- 8 Deconstructing the Color of Class -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Index -- Acknowledgments

Sommario/riassunto

"Even though we lived a few blocks away in our neighborhood or sat a seat or two away in elementary school, a vast chasm of class and racial difference separated us from them."-From the IntroductionWhat is it like to be white, poor, and socially marginalized while, at the same time, surrounded by the glowing assumption of racial privilege? Kirby Moss, an African American anthropologist and journalist, goes back to his hometown in the Midwest to examine ironies of social class in the lives of poor whites. He purposely moves beyond the most stereotypical image of white poverty in the U.S.-rural Appalachian culture-to



illustrate how poor whites carve out their existence within more complex cultural and social meanings of whiteness. Moss interacts with people from a variety of backgrounds over the course of his fieldwork, ranging from high school students to housewives. His research simultaneously reveals fundamental fault lines of American culture and the limits of prevailing conceptions of social order and establishes a basis for reconceptualizing the categories of color and class.Ultimately Moss seeks to write an ethnography not only of whiteness but of blackness as well. For in struggling with the elusive question of class difference in U.S. society, Moss finds that he must also deal with the paradoxical nature of his own fragile and contested position as an unassumed privileged black man suspended in the midst of assumed white privilege.