White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

Isenberg provides examples from popular culture, such as The Dukes of Hazzard television show and the Bob Ewell character in To Kill a Mockingbird, that depict poor white people negatively or label them as white trash. While Americans lack an appreciation or understanding of class, there is a class hierarchy in the US. Its roots date to the colonial era in the 1500s and 1600s. Originally called “waste people,” poor Americans “were stigmatized for their inability to be productive, to own property, or to produce healthy and upwardly mobile children” (xxvii). The language used to describe them marked them as inferior. That language had its roots in English attitudes toward vagrancy and denoted “a transatlantic fixation with animal husbandry, demography, and pedigree” (xxviii). Stereotypes of ill breeding remain obvious into the 21st century. Land and property ownership are central to class identity. Isenberg argues that the marginalized classes were equated with scrubby, barren, and swampy wasteland (xxix). In the book, she seeks to tell the story of America’s rural past and the role of class.

American history is most often presented without reference to social class. In reality, the early settlement of the colonies was defined by class. The British sought to transport those considered idle and unproductive to the Americas and, thereby, reduce poverty at home. The poor in England were considered a breed apart and incurable. Long before they came to be labeled “trailer trash,” they were called “lubbers,” “rubbish,” “clay-eaters,” and “crackers.” This underclass has persisted in American history despite the promise of equality of opportunity.

Initially, the British conceptualized the region formerly referred to as the New World as a “foul, weedy wilderness – a ‘sink hole’ suited to ill-bred commoners” (3). Favorable images of America came later. After the 1630s, less than one half of immigrants journeyed to the Massachusetts colony for religious reasons. Indeed, the vast majority of early colonists were considered “rubbish” and were sent to do hard labor. Some were vagrants and criminals. Others were indentured servants. Poor people, including young children from the lower class, were at times rounded up and sent over to the Americas. Discharged soldiers from the lower classes were also sent to the colonies, and poor women were sent for breeding purposes. The upper class in England viewed those who did not belong to their own social class as expendable.

This reality stands in stark contrast to the classless version of American history. There were—and are—impoverished and landless people, but they are hidden or invisible to the wealthier classes. Fables, such as Pocahontas’s purported rescue of John Smith, were constructed. While there is debate about whether such a rescue took place, Pocahontas did not choose to live in Jamestown but was there as a captive. Greed, colonial conquest, and class exploitation are simply missing from the narrative of American history. Yet, the identities of haves and have-nots established in the early colonial days persist. Those without land had “little chance to escape servitude” (14), and that “stigma of landlessness” became a defining feature of “white trash” (14). Isenberg notes that popular culture in the mid-20th century classified people by class, with shows such as The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres depicting rural poor people as stupid.