“Unlike blacks and other racial minorities, poor and mostly rural whites have few defenders, no articulated cause … And they have been made to feel deeply ashamed of themselves – as I was. This shame, this feeling of worthlessness, is one of the vilest and most self-destructive emotions to be endured. To be poor in a country that places a premium on wealth is in itself shameful. To be white and poor is unforgivable … That’s why I call them the Polish-joke class, the one group everybody feels free to belittle, knowing that no politically correct boundaries will be violated … trying to hide some shameful secret, some deep and unreachable sense of worthlessness … is the legacy of America’s poor whites.”

– Poet Lloyd van Brunt