Editing White trash (section)

==Society and culture==
===Economic status===
Many poor whites in the 19th century South were only able to locate themselves on the worst possible land available to whites, since the best land had already been taken by the white slaveholders, large (such as the large-scale [[Plantation complexes in the Southern United States|plantations]] owned by the [[planter class]]) and small. They lived and attempted to survive on ground that was sandy, swampy or covered in scrub pine and not suited for agriculture; for this, some became known as "sandhillers" and "pineys".{{sfnp|Isenberg|2016|p=146}} These "hard-scratch" inhabitants were seen to match their surroundings: they were "stony, stumpy, and shrubby, as the land they lived on".<ref>{{cite book |author=Burton, Warren |date=1839 |title=White Slavery: A New Emancipation Cause Presented to the United States |location=Worcester, Massachusetts |pages=168–69 |ref={{harvp|Isenberg|2016 |p=146}}}}</ref> Many ended up in the mountains, at the time the first frontier of the country. After the Civil War, these people began to be referred to as "hillbillies".<ref name="Harkins 2003">{{cite book |title=Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon |last=Harkins |first=Anthony |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |edition=1st |date=November 20, 2003 |isbn=978-0-1951-4631-8}}</ref>

In the popular imagination of the mid-19th century, "poor white trash" were a "curious" breed of degenerate, gaunt, haggard people who suffered from numerous physical and social defects. They were seen as dirty, ragged, emaciated, and disgusting, and had feeble children with distended abdomens who were wrinkled and withered beyond their physical years, so that even 10-year-olds' "countenances are stupid and heavy and they often become dropsical and loathsome to sight", according to a New Hampshire schoolteacher. The skin of a poor white Southerner was described as waxy, "ghastly yellowish-white" like old parchment, or so white they almost appeared to be [[albino]]s. The parents were listless and slothful, neglected their children, and were alcoholics. They were looked on with contempt by both upper-class [[Planter class|planters]] and [[Yeoman#Yeoman farmers|yeoman farmers]] &ndash; the non-slave-owning [[smallholding|smallholders]].{{sfnp|Isenberg|2016|pp=136, 146, 151-52, 167, 170}}

[[Harriet Beecher Stowe]] described a white trash woman and her children in ''[[Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp]]'', published in 1856:

{{blockquote|Crouched on a pile of dirty straw, sat a miserable haggard woman, with large, wild eyes, sunken cheeks, disheveled matted hair, and long, lean hands, like a bird's claws. At her skinny breast an emaciated infant was hanging, pushing, with its little skeleton hands, as if to force nourishment which nature no longer gave; and two scared-looking children, with features wasted and pinched blue with famine, were clinging to her gown. The whole group huddled together, drawing as far away as possible from the new comer {{sic}}, looking up with large, frightened eyes, like hunted wild animals.<ref>{{cite book |author=Stowe, Harriet Beecher |orig-date=1856 |date=2000 |title=[[Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp]] |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |pages=105–06 |ref={{harvp|Isenberg|2016 |pp=148-49}}}}</ref>}}

White Southerners of the period equated coarse and disagreeable appearances with immoral thoughts and uncivil or criminal behavior – an evil countenance often meant a villainous character. In this way poor whites with unhealthy or ugly bodies &ndash; the result in large part of poor diets, lack of personal grooming, and a toxic environment &ndash; were condemned by the larger white community at first sight, with no thought given to investigating or ameliorating the conditions that were responsible for their appearances.{{sfnp|Wyatt-Brown|2007|pp=397-398}}

The physical characteristics of white trash were thought to be inherited in nature, serving to separate poor whites from the Southern gentility and those yeomen who shared patrician values. Slavery apologist Daniel R. Hundley's 1860 book ''Social Relations in Our Southern States'' includes a chapter entitled "White Trash". He used the existence of poor whites with supposed "bad blood" to argue that genetics and not societal structure was the problem, and that therefore slavery was justified. He called white trash the "laziest two-legged animals that walk erect on the face of the Earth", describing their appearance as "lank, lean, angular, and bony, with ... sallow complexion, awkward manners, and a natural stupidity or dullness of intellect that almost surpasses belief".<ref name="Machado 2017"/>{{sfnp|Wyatt-Brown|2007|pp=46, 117|postscript=; see Hundley, Daniel R. (1999) [1860] [https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/hundley/hundley.html ''Social Relations in Our Southern States'']. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Academic Affairs Library, University of North Carolina (digital edition). p. 251: "Who ever yet knew a [[Godolphin (novel)|Godolphin]] [ideal man] that was sired by a miserable scrub?," asks Hundley as supposed proof for his theory, "or who ever yet saw an athletic, healthy human being, standing six feet in his stockings, who was the offspring of runtish forefathers or wheezy, asthmatic, or consumptive parents?"}} Hundley considered the white trash population to be morally inferior not only to other whites, but to the black slave population as well.  His evaluation was seconded by Randolph Shotwell, a future [[Ku Klux Klan]] leader, who described them as "a distinct race of people ... thriftless, uneducated, unthinking beings, who live little better than negroes".<ref>Fitzgerald, Michael W. (2007) ''Splendid Failure: Postwar Reconstruction in the American South''. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. {{isbn|978-1-56663-739-8}} pp.8-9</ref>

[[W. J. Cash]] in ''[[The Mind of the South]]'' (1941) writes in his description of the mythical [[Old South]] that beneath the aristocratic Cavalier planters was perceived to be:

<blockquote>...a vague race lumped together indiscriminately as the poor whites &ndash; very often, in fact, as the "white-trash". These people belong in the main to a physically inferior type, having sprung for the most part from the convict servants, redemptioners, and debtors of old Virginia and Georgia, with a sprinkling of the most unsuccessful sort of European peasants and farm laborers and the dregs of the European town slums. And so, of course, the gulf between them and the master class was impassable, and their ideas and feeling did not enter into the make-up of the prevailing Southern civilization.{{sfnp|Cash|1991|pages=xlix-l}}</blockquote>

Cash goes on to explain that those who arrived in the New World under these circumstances &ndash; at least early in the history of European settlement &ndash; were as likely to end up in the planter class or as yeoman farmers as they were to become poor whites, as land, at first, was cheap and available, and hard work could pay off in a rise in economic and social status.{{sfnp|Cash|1991|pages=5-6}} But there were some who did not succeed,

<blockquote>...the weakest element of the old backcountry population ... those who had been driven back [by the plantation system] to the red hills and the sandlands and the pine barrens and the swamps &ndash; to all the marginal lands of the South; those who, because of the poorness of the soil on which they dwelt or the great inaccessibility of markets, were, as a group, completely barred from escape or economic and social advance. They were the people to whom the term "cracker" properly applied &ndash; the "white-trash" and "po' bukra" ... [They exhibited] a distinctive physical character &ndash; a striking lankness of frame and slackness of muscle in association with a shambling gait, a boniness and misshapeness of head and feature, a peculiar swallow swartness, or alternatively a not less peculiar and a not less faded-out colorness of skin and hair.{{sfnp|Cash|1991|pages=23-24}}</blockquote>

According to Cash, this physical appearance is not, for the most part, genetically determined, but is the result of the brutal circumstances in which this group had to survive.{{sfnp|Cash|1991|page=25}}

===Cultural traditions===
====Child rearing====

In the mid-19th century South, even upper-class parents were extremely indulgent of their children, encouraging both boys and girls to be aggressive. They soon learned that they were expected to grab for what they wanted, wrestle with their siblings in front of their parents, disobey parental orders, make a racket with their toys, and physically attack visitors. Patrician girls would later be taught to be proper young ladies, but boys continued to be unrestrained, lest they become effeminate. These behaviors &ndash; which were also practiced by poorer whites to the extent their circumstances allowed &ndash; propelled young men into gambling, drinking, whoring and fighting, all of which was more or less expected as "manly" behavior. This pattern of child-rearing was predominate in the backwoods, where it was not limited to the upper class, but could be found among yeoman and poor whites alike. For white trash, this method of raising children was combined with violent folkways inherited from their English, Irish, and Scottish progenitors.{{sfnp|Wyatt-Brown|2007|pp=138-144, 166}}{{efn|According to [[Grady McWhiney]] in ''Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South'', the majority of immigrants to the South in the 1800s came from Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, with those from Scotland coming in waves after every unsuccessful rebellion there. The immigrants were emotionally-driven lower-class "crackers" who maintained archaic clan structures, did not follow the [[Protestant work ethic]], valued comfort and hospitality, and had a sense of personal, familial, and clan honor that was easily provoked. While some of these immigrants were able to enter the Southern planter aristocracy, bringing their characteristics to the "cavaliers" in it, many were not able to elevate themselves and blended into the mass of poor Southern whites; thus these characteristics can also be found in that group.<ref>[[Wolfgang Schivelbusch|Schivelbusch, Wolfgang]] (2001) ''The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery''. New York: Picador. {{isbn|0-312-42319-5}} pp.49; 317 n.29; citing [[Grady McWhiney|McWhiney, Grady]] (1988) ''Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South''. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press {{isbn|9780817303280}}</ref>}}

====Proximity to blacks and Native Americans====

According to Wyatt-Brown, the Southern style of child-rearing was seen as paralleling that of the Native Americans who were a constant presence in post-colonial America, especially in the backwoods areas.{{sfnp|Wyatt-Brown|2007|p=143}} Accordingly, another theory for the existence of white trash held that the degraded condition of poor white southerners was the result of living in close proximity to blacks and Native Americans. [[Samuel Stanhope Smith]], a minister and educator who was the seventh president of [[Princeton University|Princeton College]], wrote in 1810 that poor white southerners lived in "a state of absolute savagism", which caused them to resemble Indians in the color of their skin and their clothing, a belief that was endemic in the 18th and early 19th century. Smith saw them as a stumbling block in the evolution of mainstream American whites,{{sfnp|Painter|2010|pp=117–18}} a view that had previously been expressed by [[J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur]] in his 1782 book, ''[[Letters from an American Farmer]]''. Crèvecœur, a French soldier-diplomat who resettled in the United States, considered poor white southerners to be "not ... a very pleasing spectacle" and inferior to the prototypical American he celebrated in his book, but still hoped that the effects of progress would improve the condition of these people whom he considered "the most hideous parts of our society".{{sfnp|Painter|2010|pp=107–109}}

====Celtic heritage====

The [[Brandeis University]] historian [[David Hackett Fischer]] says there is an enduring genetic basis for a "willingness to resort to violence" &ndash; citing especially the finding of high blood levels of [[testosterone]] &ndash; in the four main chapters of his book ''[[Albion's Seed]]''.<ref>Particularly the chapter "Borderlands to the Backcountry: The Flight from Middle Britain and Northern Ireland, 1717-1775".</ref> He proposes that a propensity for violence in the Mid-Atlantic, Southern and Western states is due to genetic changes wrought over generations living in traditional herding societies in [[Northern England]], the [[Scottish Borders]], and Irish [[Border Region]], which were then transferred to other ethnic groups by shared culture.<ref>[[David Hackett Fischer|Fischer, David Hackett]] (1989) ''[[Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America]]''. New York: [[Oxford University Press]]. {{ISBN|978-0-19-506905-1}}</ref>{{efn|In ''Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and Southern Heritage'', [[Grady McWhiney]] and Perry D. Jamiesen analyze the military behavior of the Confederate Army by comparing it to that of the Celts of Europe and the British Isles, and conclude that the Confederate's over-aggressiveness coupled with a lack of tenacity, among other characteristics, is well-aligned with Celtic battle behavior throughout history. They believe that the Celtic-ness of the South was one of the factors which contributed to its losing the [[American Civil War|Civil War]].<ref>[[Grady McWhiney|McWhiney, Grady]] and Jamiesen, Perry D. (1982) ''Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and Southern Heritage''. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press. pp.170-191. {{isbn|0-8173-0229-8}}</ref>}}

Even before there was any scientific investigation into the roots of the poor white people of the South, social critic [[H. L. Mencken]], in his 1919 essay "Sahara of the Bozart", challenged the prevailing myth at the time that "poor white trash", and most of the South's population, were primarily of Anglo-Saxon stock, suggesting most were Celtic, with lesser elements of French, Spanish, German and African American heritage.{{efn|Mencken wrote: "The chief strain down there, I believe, is Celtic rather than Saxon, particularly in the hill country French blood, too, shows itself here and there, and so does Spanish, and so does German. The last-named entered from the northward, by way of the limestone belt just east of the Alleghenies. Again, it is very likely that in some parts of the South a good many of the plebeian whites have more than a trace of Negro blood. Interbreeding under concubinage produced some very light half-breeds at an early day, and no doubt appreciable numbers of them went over into the white race by the simple process of changing their abode."<ref>[[H. L. Mencken|Mencken, H. L.]] (1919) [http://writing2.richmond.edu/jessid/eng423/restricted/mencken.pdf "Sahara of the Bozart"] in Cairns, Huntington, editor (1977) ''The American Scene: A Reader''. New York: Knopf. pp.157-168</ref>}} According to historian [[Jack Temple Kirby]], Mencken was "woefully ignorant of even the basics of southern history", and was a "captive of the tradition that Old South society consisted only of planter aristocrats, slaves, and poor white trash".<ref>[[Jack Temple Kirby|Kirby, Jack Temple]] (1986) [1976] ''Media-Made Dixie: The South in the American Imagination''. Atlanta: University of Georgia Press. p.66. {{isbn|0-8203-0885-4}}</ref>

====As a legacy of slavery====

In his classic study, ''[[Democracy in America]]'' (1835), French aristocrat [[Alexis de Tocqueville]] sees the state of poor white southerners as being one of the effects of the slave system, which made them ignorant, idle, prideful, self-indulgent, and weak. He writes:

{{blockquote |From birth, the southern American is invested with a kind of domestic dictatorship ... and the first habit he learns is that of effortless domination ... [which turns] the southern American into a haughty, hasty, irascible, violent man, passionate in his desires and irritated by obstacles. But he is easily discouraged if he fails to succeed at his first attempt.{{sfnp|Painter|2010|pp=126-27}}}}

Poor whites were restricted from holding political office due to property qualifications, and their ability to vote was at the mercy of courts controlled by the slave-holding planters, meaning they had few advocates. Many were tenant farmers or day laborers, while others were forced to live as scavengers, thieves and vagrants, but all were socially ostracized by "proper" white society. Even slaves looked down on them.{{sfnp|Isenberg|2016|pp=149–50}} Despite poor whites being looked down on by both the planters and the yeoman farmers, they held the Blacks of the South in deep contempt. Cash writes that the slave system "bred [in common whites] a savage and ignoble hate for the Negro, which required only opportunity to break forth in relentless ferocity".{{sfnp|Cash|1991|page=83}}

====Roistering among the British working class====

Poor Southern whites in the 19th century were often casual about male sexual activity outside of marriage, in spite of evangelical revivalism and increasing church discipline. Wyatt-Brown suggests that this was part of a roistering tradition with roots in the class' British origins, and differentiated white trash from both the yeoman class and landed gentry of the plantations, where church proscriptions and social inhibitions held sway, respectively.{{sfnp|Wyatt-Brown|2007|pp=298-298}} For poor white women, there was generally a double standard: girls who broke the code of chastity and bore children outside of wedlock were often subject to public humiliation. In some deep mountain backwoods, however, such girls were seen as fertile rather than shameful.{{sfnp|Wyatt-Brown|2007|pp=448-449}}

===Politics===

Northerners claimed that the existence of white trash was the result of the system of slavery in the South, while Southerners worried that these clearly inferior whites would upset the "natural" class system which held that all whites were superior to all other races, especially blacks. People of both regions expressed concern that if the number of white trash people increased significantly, they would threaten the Jeffersonian ideal of a population of educated white freemen as the basis of a robust American democracy.{{sfnp|Isenberg|2016|p=136}}

For [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], the mid-19th-century American philosopher and writer, poor people of all kinds&nbsp;&ndash; including poor white Southerners&nbsp;&ndash; lived in poverty because of traits inherent to their nature. The poor were "carted to America to ditch & to drudge" only "to lie down prematurely to make a spot of greener grass" afterwards. According to Emerson, these people were fated to inhabit the lowest niches of society, and he specifically excluded them from his definition of what an ''American'' was. Emerson's "American" was of virile heritage – descended from the [[Danes]], [[Norsemen]], [[Saxons]], and [[Anglo-Saxons]] – and was known for "beastly ferocity" and beauty, not shared by the poor white Southerners. Emerson felt New Englanders and northern Americans were superior to the other "races", but also to white Southerners (especially poor ones).{{sfnp|Painter|2010|pp=167–74, 186–87}}

Some, such as [[Theodore Roosevelt]], saw poor "degenerate" whites &ndash; as well as the mass of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe &ndash; as causing "[[race suicide]]", the concept that poor whites and unwanted immigrants would eventually [[Great Replacement conspiracy theory in the United States|out-procreate and replace]] those of the dominant and superior (northern European) white "race", to the detriment of the country.{{sfnp|Painter|2010|pp=250–53}}