I don't believe America's "elite" really ever had any "respect" for poor whites, per se. My family has a Scandinavian background and I went to a college which e

I don't believe America's "elite" really ever had any "respect" for poor whites, per se. My family has a Scandinavian background and I went to a college which emphasized this cultural history, so we had to take a history classes about things like the plight of Norwegian immigrants in the 1860s. The elite english corporatists who employed poor scandinavian whites to build railroads and whatnot mostly viewed them as stupid but hard working laborers who chewed tobacco, drank too much and spoke a hilarious sing-song germanic language. I actually think this stereotype still exists a bit in places where there are still vestiges of WASP culture. When I lived in Boston my employers, who were local Brahmins always called me "hard working" which was a euphemism for "stupid, but gets the job done." (In contrast, they called their Harvard educated employees "clever") When it comes to receiving the hillbilly quota scholarship, my grandparents happened to be poor and living in the middle of nowhere but also had advanced degrees in mathematics and religion and were employed as schoolteachers.