Editing White trash (section)

====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}}