White Trash

White Trash Plot Summary

Introduction

When we think of American history, we often imagine a land of opportunity where anyone can rise from rags to riches through hard work and determination. Yet beneath this cherished national mythology lies a darker reality: from the earliest colonial settlements to the present day, America has maintained a persistent underclass of poor whites who have been systematically marginalized, stigmatized, and treated as a separate breed apart from "normal" Americans. This enduring class divide challenges our most fundamental beliefs about American exceptionalism and social mobility. The story of America's white underclass reveals how deeply entrenched class hierarchies have been disguised through racial solidarity and myths of meritocracy. From the "waste people" shipped to colonial Virginia to the "white trash" portrayed in modern reality television, the language used to describe poor whites has remained remarkably consistent across centuries. By tracing this history, we gain crucial insights for understanding contemporary politics and culture, including why many Americans continue to vote against their economic interests and how class prejudice has shaped our national identity in ways we rarely acknowledge.

Chapter 1: Colonial Origins: Waste People in the New World (1600s-1700s)

The story of America's white underclass begins not with the celebrated Pilgrims seeking religious freedom, but with England's deliberate export of its "human waste" to the New World. In the early 1600s, colonial promoters like Richard Hakluyt explicitly advocated using American colonies as dumping grounds for England's poor, criminals, and vagrants. These people were described in dehumanizing terms - as "offscourings," "rubbish," and "waste" - language that justified their removal from English society and their exploitation in colonial ventures. Jamestown, established in 1607, became a brutal labor camp where indentured servants faced staggering mortality rates. These servants, who traded years of labor for passage to America, were treated as disposable property. They could be bought, sold, whipped, and had their terms extended for minor infractions. Women were imported specifically as "breeding stock," valued at 150 pounds of tobacco - the same price exacted for purchasing freedom. When servants died, their children were often sold off like foreclosed property, perpetuating cycles of exploitation and poverty. Even in New England, where religious motivations were stronger, rigid class hierarchies prevailed. John Winthrop, who famously described his vision of a "city upon a hill," also declared that "God Almightie in his most holy and wise providence hath soe disposed the Condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich some poore." The Puritans maintained elaborate sumptuary laws regulating what people of different classes could wear and seated people in church according to social rank rather than piety. These practices reinforced the idea that poverty reflected divine judgment rather than social injustice. By the early 1700s, distinct communities of marginalized whites had formed throughout the colonies. William Byrd II, a Virginia aristocrat, described North Carolina's poor whites as "lazy lubbers" who lived like animals in crude shelters. He claimed they were physically degenerate, with yellowish skin from eating clay, and attributed their poverty to inherent laziness rather than lack of opportunity. This language of inherent inferiority would evolve over time but remain remarkably consistent in American discourse about poverty. The colonial era thus established the foundation for America's long tradition of class prejudice. Despite the rhetoric of equality that would emerge during the Revolution, the idea that some people were inherently superior to others based on their "breeding" had already taken deep root. The language used to describe the poor - as waste, rubbish, and a separate breed - would persist and evolve over the centuries to come, shaping how Americans viewed class differences well into the modern era.

Chapter 2: Frontier Identity: Squatters and Crackers in Early America (1780s-1840s)

Following the American Revolution, a new national identity began to take shape, but the class divisions established in colonial times persisted and evolved. As Americans pushed westward into new territories, a distinctive frontier culture emerged among poor whites who settled on the margins of society. These "squatters" occupied land without legal title, living beyond the reach of government authority in crude log cabins. Their precarious existence made them objects of both fascination and contempt for more established Americans. By the early 1800s, a rich vocabulary had developed to describe these frontier poor whites. The term "cracker" gained widespread usage, particularly in the South. British colonial officials had first used this term in the 1760s to describe "a lawless set of rascals on the frontiers" who "often change their places of abode." Other terms like "lubber" (lazy person) and "clay-eater" emphasized the perceived physical and moral degeneracy of poor whites. These people were described as having a distinctive physique - "gaunt, long-limbed, lanthorn-jawed" - and women of this class were portrayed as "brutes with manners no better than sailors." Andrew Jackson's rise to the presidency in 1828 brought frontier identity to the national stage. Nicknamed "Old Hickory" for his toughness, Jackson was celebrated by his supporters as a champion of the common man against eastern elites. His 1828 campaign against John Quincy Adams was marked by class tensions, with Jackson's supporters lifting glasses in violent toasts against the "Adamites." Yet Jackson himself was a wealthy plantation owner, and his policies often favored land speculators over squatters. The contradiction embodied by Jackson - a wealthy man posing as a champion of the poor - revealed the complex ways that class identity was being negotiated in the young republic. The frontier created a split personality in American culture regarding poor whites. At their best, they were celebrated as independent spirits and homespun philosophers; at their worst, they were condemned as ruthless brawlers and eye-gougers. This ambivalence was captured in the mythologizing of figures like Davy Crockett. The real Crockett, who served in Congress and advocated for squatters' rights, was overshadowed by the mythical figure created in popular almanacs - an untutored backwoodsman capable of superhuman feats. These tall tales transformed him into a comic character who provoked laughter rather than respect. By the 1840s, the presidential campaign had fully embraced frontier imagery as political theater. The 1840 election marked the moment when the squatter morphed into the colloquial common man of democratic lore. Both parties embraced log cabins, popular nicknames, hard-cider drinking, and coonskin caps as symbols of authenticity. Yet this performance of commonness masked the reality that political equality remained elusive - many states retained property qualifications for voting, and economic opportunities for the poorest Americans remained severely limited. The frontier era thus established a pattern that would persist throughout American history: the celebration of rugged individualism and common-man rhetoric alongside policies that often favored the wealthy and well-connected. The language and imagery of frontier identity would continue to shape American politics long after the actual frontier had disappeared, creating powerful myths about class mobility that often contradicted the lived experiences of America's poorest citizens.

Chapter 3: Blood and Breeding: Scientific Racism and Poor Whites (1840s-1860s)

By the mid-nineteenth century, the language used to describe poor whites took on increasingly biological overtones. The term "white trash" gained widespread popularity in the 1850s, joining earlier labels like "sandhillers" and "clay-eaters." These poor whites were no longer just economically disadvantaged; they were increasingly viewed as a separate, degenerate breed with inherent physical defects - a diseased breed and the degenerate spawn of a "notorious race." This period saw an obsession with blood and breeding that permeated American culture. The South's preoccupation with horse breeding provided a model for thinking about human reproduction. Scottish physiologist Alexander Walker revived debates over whether humans should breed to "improve the race," while American health reformers recommended selecting spouses according to the same natural laws that applied to horse breeding. They advised attending to pedigree and avoiding the "ill-born" who produced nothing but "poor and feeble stock." This language of breeding was applied to humans with disturbing ease. Observers emphasized the poor whites' ghostly, yellowish skin tone - a color they called "tallow." With cotton-white hair and waxy pigmentation, they were classed with albinos. Highly inbred, they supposedly ruined themselves through addiction to alcohol and dirt. Swedish writer Fredrika Bremer remarked in 1853 that in consuming "unctuous earth," clay-eaters were literally eating themselves to death. These descriptions portrayed poor whites as biologically distinct from "normal" Americans, their poverty explained by inherent defects rather than social conditions. Race and healthful inheritance were part of a single discussion. Alabama surgeon Josiah Nott declared in 1843 that mulattoes were "faulty stock," a "degenerate, unnatural offspring, doomed by nature to work out its own destruction." Similar language was applied to poor whites, who were increasingly viewed as a degraded race. The acquisition of Texas and California in the 1840s fueled Anglo-Saxon fantasies of racial dominance, but also raised anxieties about racial mixing and degeneration on the frontier. North Carolinian Hinton Rowan Helper, in his controversial book "The Impending Crisis of the South" (1857), portrayed poor whites as victims of the slave system but also as a degenerate class prone to crime, immorality, and ignorance. Helper compared the gold craze in California to the cotton South's single-crop economy, arguing that both created extreme class conditions and a "poverty-stricken" underclass. His work revealed the complex intersection of economic critique and biological determinism that characterized discussions of poor whites. The Free Soil movement that emerged in the late 1840s framed its opposition to slavery's expansion in class terms. Free Soilers argued that slavery was spreading death and decay, "depopulating" the nation of its white inhabitants by forcing poor southern whites from their homes. George Weston wrote in his pamphlet "The Poor Whites of the South" (1856) that they were "sinking deeper and more hopelessly into barbarism with every succeeding generation." This language of degeneration would provide a foundation for the eugenics movement that would emerge in the late nineteenth century, targeting poor whites as much as racial minorities.

Chapter 4: Civil War as Class Warfare: The Mudsill Theory (1860s-1870s)

The Civil War, often framed primarily as a conflict over slavery and states' rights, was also profoundly shaped by class tensions that had been building for decades. When Jefferson Davis addressed the crowd at his 1861 inauguration as Confederate president, he invoked a biblical metaphor to describe his new constituency: "men of one flesh, one bone, one interest, one purpose, and of identity of domestic institutions." This rhetoric of unity masked deep divisions within southern society, particularly between slaveholders and non-slaveholders. Confederate ideology converted the Civil War into a class war by promoting the "mudsill theory" - the idea that all societies required a permanent underclass to perform menial labor. James Henry Hammond, South Carolina's leading proslavery intellectual, had coined the term "mudsill" in an 1858 Senate speech to describe the essential inferiority of the North's socioeconomic system. In all societies, Hammond argued, "there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life." The South had made the right choice in keeping African slaves in this lowly station, while the North had debased its own kind. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens made Hammond's mudsill theory the cornerstone of the Confederacy. In his famous "Cornerstone Speech," he equated the Confederacy with a well-constructed mansion, with slaves as its mudsill base and whites its "brick and marble" adornment. The brick represented the sturdy yeoman and the planter elite its finely polished alabaster. This architectural metaphor revealed how deeply class hierarchy was embedded in Confederate ideology, even as leaders appealed to white racial solidarity. The realities of war exposed the hollowness of Confederate unity. The "twenty slave law," which granted exemptions to planters with twenty or more slaves, was particularly odious to poor whites. Some nonslaveholders refused to fight for the protection of slavery, while others thought the wealthy should pay higher taxes to subsidize a war that benefited them most. Desertion was common among poor recruits - by August 1863, General Robert E. Lee was pleading with President Davis to take action to curb it. Food shortages and inflation led to massive suffering among poor farmers, urban laborers, women, and children. Union generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman believed they were fighting a war against a slaveholding aristocracy, and that winning would liberate not only slaves but also poor white trash. In his memoir, Grant wrote that under the "old régime," poor whites were nothing but "trash" to the planter aristocracy. They needed emancipation too. This recognition of class exploitation within the South informed Union strategy and propaganda, which attempted to drive a wedge between different classes of southern whites. By the end of the war, class divisions had severely undermined the Confederacy. In Mississippi, a community seceded from the Confederacy, creating the "Free State of Jones" - a white trash Union sanctuary in President Davis's home state. Similar pockets of resistance emerged throughout the South. The Civil War thus represented not just a conflict between North and South but also a class war within the South itself, exposing contradictions that had been building since colonial times. The defeat of the Confederacy created opportunities for a more egalitarian society, but these would be largely unrealized as new forms of racial and class control emerged during Reconstruction and beyond.

Chapter 5: Eugenics and Exclusion: Controlling the 'Unfit' (1880s-1930s)

The decades following the Civil War saw the emergence of eugenics - a pseudoscientific movement that sought to improve human heredity through selective breeding. While eugenics is often associated with racial theories targeting non-white groups, it also provided a "scientific" framework for understanding and controlling poor whites, who were increasingly viewed as a biologically distinct and degenerate population that threatened America's racial purity and national progress. Charles Darwin's theories of natural selection, published in 1859, transformed how Americans understood human differences. Social Darwinists applied evolutionary concepts to human society, arguing that poverty and wealth reflected natural selection at work. Richard Dugdale's influential study "The Jukes" (1877) traced the genealogy of a poor rural family in New York, claiming to demonstrate how "degenerate" traits were passed down through generations. Similar studies followed, including Oscar McCulloch's "The Tribe of Ishmael" (1888), which examined a poor white family in Indiana. These family studies portrayed poverty as hereditary rather than environmental. The eugenics movement gained institutional power through research centers like the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, directed by Charles Davenport. Eugenicists advocated policies to prevent the reproduction of the "unfit" while encouraging "better stock" to have more children. By the 1910s, eugenics had become mainstream science, taught in universities and promoted by prominent physicians. State fairs featured "Fitter Families" contests alongside livestock competitions, awarding medals to families judged to have superior genetic qualities. Compulsory sterilization laws, first passed in Indiana in 1907, spread to over 30 states by the 1930s. These laws primarily targeted the "feebleminded" - a flexible category that often included poor, uneducated whites. The Supreme Court upheld such laws in Buck v. Bell (1927), with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes infamously declaring, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Carrie Buck, the plaintiff in this case, was a poor white woman from Virginia who was sterilized after being classified as "feebleminded." Later research would reveal that she was of normal intelligence, her real crime being poverty and pregnancy out of wedlock. Public health campaigns targeting hookworm and pellagra in the South inadvertently reinforced stereotypes about poor whites. Photographs of barefoot, emaciated "clay-eaters" with distended bellies were widely circulated, presenting them as medical specimens rather than victims of economic exploitation. The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission's hookworm eradication program (1909-1915) treated the disease but also portrayed southern poor whites as lazy and dirty, their condition attributed to biological inferiority rather than lack of sanitation infrastructure. Immigration restriction was another facet of eugenic policy. The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 established quotas that severely limited immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, reflecting fears about racial "degeneration." Madison Grant's bestseller "The Passing of the Great Race" (1916) warned that America's Nordic stock was being diluted by inferior breeds, including not just immigrants but also the "native American underclass." These policies reflected a growing concern that poor whites represented a threat to national vitality that needed to be contained through scientific management. The eugenics era represented the most extreme manifestation of America's long-standing prejudice against poor whites. By providing scientific justification for class prejudice, eugenics allowed Americans to maintain their belief in equal opportunity while explaining persistent poverty as the result of biological inferiority rather than social injustice. The legacy of these ideas would continue to shape American attitudes toward poverty long after eugenics itself had been discredited by its association with Nazi Germany.

Chapter 6: New Deal to Civil Rights: White Poverty Amid Prosperity (1930s-1960s)

The Great Depression of the 1930s temporarily transformed America's understanding of poverty. As millions of formerly middle-class Americans lost their jobs and homes, poverty could no longer be easily dismissed as the result of individual moral failings or bad heredity. The economic crisis demanded new explanations and new government responses, leading to the New Deal programs that would reshape the relationship between citizens and the federal government. Documentary photographers and journalists brought the faces of poverty into middle-class living rooms. Dorothea Lange's photographs of migrant workers, Walker Evans and James Agee's portraits of Alabama tenant farmers in "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men," and John Steinbeck's novel "The Grapes of Wrath" created powerful images of rural white poverty. These works emphasized environmental causes of poverty - dust storms, soil erosion, and economic exploitation - rather than hereditary defects. The metaphor of "human erosion" linked the devastation of the land to the devastation of human lives. New Deal agencies like the Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration attempted to address rural poverty through resettlement communities, loans to tenant farmers, and agricultural reform. Rexford Tugwell, head of the Resettlement Administration, rejected the notion that inferior heredity caused rural poverty. Projects like Penderlea Homesteads in North Carolina sought to transform "trash" into productive citizens through environmental engineering - providing modern homes, cooperative farms, and community facilities. Yet these efforts often reflected paternalistic attitudes toward the poor, treating them as objects to be reformed rather than citizens with agency. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which brought electricity and flood control to the impoverished Tennessee Valley, symbolized the New Deal approach to regional poverty. Rather than blaming poor whites for their condition, New Dealers like Howard Odum argued that the South suffered from colonial exploitation that had created a "pathology of economy." Odum's 1936 study "Southern Regions of the United States" became the New Deal's major resource for regional planning, demonstrating how the South had surrendered ninety-seven million acres to erosion and ignored human potential by refusing to provide technological training or basic services. World War II and the postwar economic boom dramatically reduced overall poverty rates, but pockets of white poverty persisted, especially in rural areas and among those left behind by suburbanization. The 1950s witnessed the growth of trailer parks as housing for the working poor, creating new forms of residential segregation by class. "Trailer trash" emerged as a new iteration of the old white trash stereotype - mobile home residents were viewed with the same contempt once reserved for squatters and clay-eaters. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s brought class and race into stark relief. When schools were desegregated, it was often poor whites who became the face of resistance. The iconic photograph of Elizabeth Eckford being harassed by a screaming Hazel Bryan outside Little Rock Central High School in 1957 captured this dynamic. While wealthy whites could retreat to private academies, poor whites found themselves competing directly with blacks for educational resources and jobs. This period saw the emergence of a complex politics of resentment that would reshape American political alignments in the decades to come.

Chapter 7: From Redneck Pride to Reality TV: Commercializing White Trash (1970s-2000s)

The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed a remarkable transformation in how "white trash" identity was portrayed and perceived in American culture. What had once been purely a term of derision began to be reclaimed, commercialized, and even celebrated in popular media. This period saw the emergence of "redneck chic" - the adoption of stereotypically lower-class white cultural markers by the middle and upper classes, often in a performative or ironic way. The 1970s saw the rise of country music stars like Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn who embraced their humble origins while achieving mainstream success. Parton famously quipped, "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap," acknowledging both her glamorous transformation and her roots in rural poverty. NASCAR racing grew from its origins in moonshine running to become a multimillion-dollar industry with a distinctly working-class white fan base. These cultural phenomena represented a complex negotiation of class identity, simultaneously celebrating and commodifying aspects of poor white culture. Television in the 1970s and 1980s discovered the commercial potential of "hick" entertainment. Shows like "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Hee Haw," and "The Dukes of Hazzard" presented sanitized versions of rural poverty as comedy. These programs traded on stereotypes while simultaneously making rural characters more palatable to mainstream audiences. "The Beverly Hillbillies," in particular, played on the fish-out-of-water scenario of poor mountaineers suddenly enriched by oil and transplanted to California. Critics noted that the show's appeal lay in its portrayal of class conflict - the "snobs" versus the "slobs" - disguised as comedy. The presidencies of Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) and Bill Clinton (1993-2001) brought southern white identity to the national stage in complex ways. Carter, though from a relatively privileged background, presented himself as a peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia. His brother Billy became a redneck celebrity, producing his own "Billy Beer" and making outrageous statements to the press. Clinton, the "boy from Hope, Arkansas," faced constant scrutiny about his origins. His mother's multiple marriages, his half-brother Roger's drug problems, and his own fondness for McDonald's became fodder for critics who questioned his fitness for office. When Clinton faced impeachment in 1998, commentators like Michael Lind explicitly connected the proceedings to class prejudice. The early 2000s witnessed the rise of reality television shows that turned poor whites into entertainment. Programs like "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo," "Duck Dynasty," and "Moonshiners" presented poor white families as exotic specimens for middle-class viewers. While these shows sometimes humanized their subjects, they also reinforced the notion that white trash represented a distinct and permanent underclass with its own peculiar customs and values. The modern impulse for "slumming" found expression in these programs, which treated poor whites as entertainment rather than fellow citizens facing economic hardship. The 2008 election brought class tensions to the forefront of American politics. Sarah Palin's vice-presidential candidacy generated intense class-based criticism, with detractors describing her as "white trash Barbie" and scrutinizing her family's troubles as evidence of backwoods immorality. After McCain's campaign advisers spent lavishly on her wardrobe, one angry aide categorized the Palins' shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast." These attacks revealed the persistence of class prejudice in American political discourse. By the early twenty-first century, "white trash" had become a complex cultural signifier - simultaneously a slur, a marketable identity, and a lens through which Americans negotiated anxieties about class in a supposedly classless society. The commercialization of white trash identity did little to address the actual conditions of poverty that continued to shape the lives of millions of Americans, even as it made certain aspects of poor white culture more visible in the mainstream.

Summary

The history of America's white underclass reveals a persistent contradiction at the heart of our national identity. From the earliest colonial settlements to the present day, we have maintained the fiction of a classless society while simultaneously creating and reinforcing rigid class boundaries. The language used to describe poor whites - from "waste people" to "crackers" to "white trash" - has evolved over time, but the underlying assumption of inherent inferiority has remained remarkably consistent. This contradiction manifests in our politics as well, where politicians from Andrew Jackson to Bill Clinton have exploited their humble origins to appear relatable to voters, while simultaneously distancing themselves from the truly poor. This historical perspective offers crucial insights for understanding contemporary American society. It explains why class remains such a powerful but often unacknowledged force in our politics, with cultural resentments frequently overshadowing economic interests. It challenges us to recognize how deeply entrenched class hierarchies have been disguised through racial solidarity and myths of meritocracy. And it suggests that true equality requires addressing not just racial discrimination but also the persistent barriers of class that limit opportunity for millions of Americans. Until we confront our long history of class prejudice and the myth that anyone can succeed through hard work alone, we cannot fulfill America's promise of equal opportunity for all citizens, regardless of the circumstances of their birth.

About Author

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Nancy Isenberg

Nancy Isenberg is the author of New York Times bestseller White Trash, and Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr, which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in Biography and won the Oklahoma Book Award for best book in Nonfiction. She is the coauthor, with Andrew Burstein, of Madison and Jefferson. She is the T. Harry Williams Professor of American History at LSU, and writes regularly for Salon.com. Isenberg is the winner of the 2016 Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. She lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Charlottesville, Virginia.

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