Speaker 1: Global business news twenty four hours a day at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot Com, the radio, plus Globo LA and on your radio.
Speaker 1: This is a Bloomberg Business Flash from Bloomberg World Headquarters.
Speaker 1: I'm Katherine Cowdery. Commodity producers and lenders led US docks
Speaker 1: lower after comments from Bank of England Governor Mark Kearney.
Speaker 1: We kindle concerns that Britain's withdrawal from the European Union
Speaker 1: will further weigh on tepid global growth. Energy and financial
Speaker 1: shares were among the biggest losers, with investors showing a
Speaker 1: preference for Haven's Equity. Declines and higher volatility reflected some
Speaker 1: of the anxiety seeing during a two days sell off
Speaker 1: following the Brexit vote. We check the markets every fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: Now Industrial Average down one hundred nine point six tents
Speaker 1: of a percent. It closed at seventeen thousand, eight hundred forty,
Speaker 1: narrowing earlier losses. SMP five hundred down fourteen points two
Speaker 1: thirds of a percent to two thousand eighty eight. Then
Speaker 1: AZZAC fell forty points seven eighths of a percent to
Speaker 1: forty eight twenty two West exist in a media Crude
Speaker 1: oil down two dollars nineteen cents of carrel four an
Speaker 1: a half percent of forty six eighty one is about
Speaker 1: gold up nineteen dollar seventy cents announced at thirteen fifty
Speaker 1: eight seventy and the tenure treasure got twenty thirty seconds
Speaker 1: with the yield of one point three seven And that's
Speaker 1: a Bloomberg Business flash. You're listening to Taking the Stock
Speaker 1: with Kathleen Hayes and Pim Fox on Bloomberg Radio. As
Speaker 1: we celebrated the fourth of July weekend, many of us lauded,
Speaker 1: appreciated our class. Free society or liberty and hard work
Speaker 1: are meant to ensure real social mobility. Our next guest
Speaker 1: is here to tell us, well, not so fast. Class
Speaker 1: is a much bigger issue not only the history of
Speaker 1: the United States and our democracy, but also alive and
Speaker 1: well in our political system. As two presumptive candidates vy
Speaker 1: for the White Excuse me the White House Yes in November.
Speaker 1: The new book that Nancy Iszenberg has written is White Trash,
Speaker 1: The four year untold History of Class in America. She's
Speaker 1: an author, a professor of American history at Louisia State
Speaker 1: Louisiana State University, and Nancy because I want to get
Speaker 1: to the book. I'm not going to give them all
Speaker 1: your other credits and accomplishments. But white trash. Who is
Speaker 1: white trash? And where does this where does this question
Speaker 1: of what role this group plays come in to American history? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, if we think of the word white trash,
Speaker 1: we know was first in newspaper print in the eighteen twenties,
Speaker 1: but it has a much longer history. And what I
Speaker 1: began to explore is that it goes all the way
Speaker 1: back to British colonization. Because from the very first, and
Speaker 1: this is one of the points I make, is we imagine,
Speaker 1: at the time of the Revolution, we escaped the class system,
Speaker 1: we broke free from Great Britain, but we didn't break
Speaker 1: free from the ideas about class and poverty. So the
Speaker 1: British when they imagined colonization, they thought of the New
Speaker 1: World not as the city upon the hill, but is
Speaker 1: a large trash heap, a dumping ground where they could
Speaker 1: unload the idle poor. And the people who actually came
Speaker 1: to the New World were not if we think of
Speaker 1: the pure to and seeking the majority seeking religious liberty,
Speaker 1: most of them were coming for economic reasons. So not
Speaker 1: only did we have the rise of slavery, which we
Speaker 1: know was a form of unfree labor, but we had
Speaker 1: large numbers of convict laborers, we had indentured servants, we
Speaker 1: had Irish rebels, we had the children of beggars. And
Speaker 1: that's why I think, I think one of the most
Speaker 1: disturbing things when we go back and realize how children,
Speaker 1: particularly young boys, were the major form of labor to
Speaker 1: be exploited, and most of these people were with an
Speaker 1: indentured contract. It could go anywhere from seven to nine years.
Speaker 1: And if you think about the horrible conditions in Virginia
Speaker 1: at that time, most people would not even live to adulthood.
Speaker 1: So we have to imagine that from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: White trash goes back to the term that was used
Speaker 1: by British colonization waste people, and for Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 1: Abigail Adams, their word of choice was rubbish. So one
Speaker 1: of the things I've paid attention to is the tech taxonomy,
Speaker 1: the language, and how each generation creates a set of
Speaker 1: terms to talk about the poor and to talk about
Speaker 1: how the poor are seen as trapped in this class,
Speaker 1: trapped in this class, and that unfortunately leads us to
Speaker 1: the idea that if they're trapped, we can't really help them.
Speaker 1: Charities pointless, and we have to realize that it's also
Speaker 1: connected to our rural history, that for over half of
Speaker 1: our history we were in a grarian nation and the
Speaker 1: language of class was also tied to land. You talk
Speaker 1: about it being one giant workhouse. That's your description of
Speaker 1: the United States, that it's founding right because at the time,
Speaker 1: if we think about the fifteen hundreds, when one of
Speaker 1: the key figures I talk about is Richard Hacklett, who
Speaker 1: was the foremost, foremost promoter of British colonization. He wrote
Speaker 1: the pitch to Queen Elizabeth. He's one who said that
Speaker 1: this is the destiny England has to get in the
Speaker 1: business along with the Spanish and the Dutch and think
Speaker 1: about colonization. But when if we look carefully on on
Speaker 1: what's going on in Great Britain at this time, this
Speaker 1: is when they're beginning to establish workhouses. This is where
Speaker 1: they're beginning to think of how where are we going
Speaker 1: to put the poor um And even we could take
Speaker 1: it back to the fourteen hundreds, where the British had
Speaker 1: already waged a long standing war against the poor. Well,
Speaker 1: you would think then if in essences in Dutch white uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Caucasian European indentured servants were slaves. In effect,
Speaker 1: you would think that freed slaves after the Civil War,
Speaker 1: that these two groups would have had a natural affinity,
Speaker 1: but in fact they didn't. Is that your argument into
Speaker 1: a sense that they were pitted against each other, and
Speaker 1: that has led to a lot of the class and
Speaker 1: racial issues we have today. It goes both ways. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you look at the Antebellum South, for example, poor
Speaker 1: whites and slaves created an underground system of trade which
Speaker 1: subverted the power of the plant or elite um and
Speaker 1: well into the twentieth century, they would live side by
Speaker 1: side and they would have relationships. But where they are
Speaker 1: pitted against each other comes out of politics, and I
Speaker 1: focus a lot particularly if we look at the way
Speaker 1: in which the Confederacy itself said that, well, non slaveholders
Speaker 1: and the poor are going to be willing to fight
Speaker 1: for the Confederacy because if they don't, they're going to
Speaker 1: drop down to the level of free black. So they
Speaker 1: use that as a taunt. They use that as a
Speaker 1: threat that gets revived again during reconstruction, Jim Crow, and
Speaker 1: well into the early twentieth century. I want, I'm glad
Speaker 1: to bring us to the early twentieth century because you
Speaker 1: also mentioned a very famous Supreme Court case Buck versus Bell,
Speaker 1: and I just want to give you about thirty seconds
Speaker 1: to tell us why that's relevant. Why that's relevant is
Speaker 1: that one of the other key themes. If I said
Speaker 1: land is important and waste people were the landlist, the
Speaker 1: other important theme is breeding, and this comes from animal husbandry,
Speaker 1: and it also lays the foundation for eugenics. And in fact,
Speaker 1: what we have forgotten and about Buck Fevale is that
Speaker 1: carry Buck was selected as a candidate for sterilization, which
Speaker 1: was part of the eugenics movement. In one states had
Speaker 1: sterilization laws. On the book, she was selected because she
Speaker 1: was seen as a perfect specimen of white trash um
Speaker 1: and that this group, particularly women, poor white women, were
Speaker 1: seen as a group. They first said we should put
Speaker 1: them the asylums during their refertil years, but it was
Speaker 1: cheaper to have them sterilized and then returned them to
Speaker 1: the labor forces as menial workers. Thank you very much
Speaker 1: for sharing your thoughts and congratulations on your new book.
Speaker 1: Nancy Eisenberg, White Trash, the four hundred year untold history
Speaker 1: of class in America. This is Bloomberg coming up. Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Law brought to you by a Bank of America. Mary
Speaker 1: Lynch saying what others have seen, but uncovering what others
Speaker 1: may not. Global research that helps you harness disruption for
Speaker 1: the top global research firm, five years running, Mary Lynch, Pierce,
Speaker 1: Fedner and Smith, Incorporated,