Narrator: What if the story of America’s founding wasn’t about a noble quest for freedom in a promised land, but about a calculated plan to dispose of human refuse? Imagine 16th-century English adventurers looking across the Atlantic, not at a land of opportunity, but at what they called a “pestilent, overgrown wasteland,” a “sump” fit only for the ill-bred, idle, and unwanted masses crowding their own cities. This wasn't a land to be cherished; it was a drain to be filled with the "rubbish" of English society. This startling and uncomfortable image lies at the heart of a history we’ve chosen to forget.

In her groundbreaking book, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, historian Nancy Isenberg dismantles the cherished myth of a classless American society. She argues that from its very inception, the United States was built on a rigid class system, and the marginalized, landless poor—the so-called "white trash"—have been a permanent and defining feature of the nation’s story.

Narrator: The romanticized narrative of Pilgrims seeking religious liberty obscures a far more pragmatic and brutal origin story. Isenberg reveals that early English colonization was, in essence, a massive social engineering project designed to solve a domestic poverty crisis. Prominent figures like Richard Hakluyt, a key propagandist for colonization, didn't sell the New World as a utopia but as a practical solution for England’s "surplus" population. He and others saw the poor, vagrants, and convicts not as future citizens but as "human waste" that could be productively "recycled" in the colonies.

This is vividly illustrated by the colonization plans of the 16th and 17th centuries. England was grappling with overcrowding and social unrest. The official view, as one writer put it, was that colonies should serve as "drains or sewers of the States; to drain the filth." The plan was to ship the idle and unproductive to North America, where their labor could be exploited to generate wealth for the English crown and private investors. They weren't being offered a new life out of benevolence; they were being exported as a raw material. This foundational concept reveals that class-based exploitation wasn't a flaw that developed in the American system; it was a feature from the very beginning.

Narrator: Once in the New World, the dream of a fresh start quickly dissolved into a harsh reality of hierarchy and control. The reality of early colonial life, especially in Jamestown, was marked by extreme hardship, forced labor, and a rigid class structure. The infamous "Starving Time" of 1609-1610, where 80% of the colonists died and some resorted to cannibalism, was a direct result of a system that prioritized profit for a small elite over the well-being of its laborers.

This class system was not left to chance; it was deliberately codified. A stark example is found in the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, a document co-authored by the celebrated philosopher of liberty, John Locke. Far from promoting equality, the constitutions aimed to create a semi-feudal aristocracy. They established a class of hereditary laborers called "leet-men," who were bound to the land and their lords. The law was explicit: "All children of leet-men shall be leet-men, and so to all generations." This created a permanent, inescapable underclass, proving that even the great thinkers of the age saw a fixed social hierarchy as essential to colonial society. The American class system wasn't an accident; it was designed.

Narrator: Even the nation's revered Founding Fathers, who penned the words "all men are created equal," held deeply ingrained class prejudices. Isenberg shows that their vision of an American republic had little room for the landless poor. Benjamin Franklin, for instance, is remembered for his praise of thrift and hard work, famously advising, "Up, sluggard! Waste not life! In the grave will be sleeping enough." Yet, he also viewed the poor with disdain, seeing them as a moral failing and a drain on society. He believed slavery corrupted white men by teaching them to be idle, revealing his primary concern was with productivity, not universal freedom.

Thomas Jefferson presents an even more complex contradiction. He idealized the "yeoman farmer" as the virtuous backbone of the republic, believing that land ownership was essential for citizenship. However, his solution for the poor was not to uplift them but to expand westward, pushing them and their social problems onto the frontier. In his Notes on the State of Virginia, he even proposed a system for sifting through the population to find "twenty of the best geniuses" to be educated at public expense, comparing the selection of human talent to the breeding of livestock. This eugenic-like thinking reveals a belief in a "natural aristocracy" that stood in stark contrast to his public rhetoric of equality.

Narrator: Throughout American history, a specific and dehumanizing language has been used to label and ostracize the white poor, cementing their status as a degenerate caste. In the 18th and 19th centuries, terms like "squatter," "cracker," and "clay-eater" emerged to describe poor settlers, painting them as lazy, lawless, and uncivilized. They were seen not as pioneers, but as a separate and inferior breed.

This pathologizing of poverty reached a terrifying peak in the early 20th century with the rise of the eugenics movement. So-called scientists and social reformers argued that the traits of the poor—laziness, immorality, and low intelligence—were hereditary. This pseudo-science provided a justification for discriminatory policies, including forced sterilization. The sentiment was chillingly captured in the 1927 Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell. In his majority opinion upholding the sterilization of a poor young woman, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. declared, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind... Three generations of imbeciles are enough." This quote reveals how the "white trash" stereotype had evolved from a social slur into a biological threat that needed to be managed and, if possible, eliminated.

Narrator: In the late 20th and 21st centuries, the image of "white trash" underwent a complex transformation. On one hand, the term was reappropriated by some as a badge of authentic, anti-establishment identity. Country music superstar Dolly Parton famously embraced the aesthetic, quipping, "You have no idea how much it costs to present yourself to others with this cheap look." This reappropriation challenged negative stereotypes by claiming them with pride.

On the other hand, this identity has been relentlessly caricatured and exploited by politicians and the media. From Jimmy Carter’s presidency, where his brother Billy’s "redneck" antics became a national spectacle, to Sarah Palin’s 2008 vice-presidential campaign, which strategically leveraged a "hockey mom" persona, class has been a powerful tool in American politics. More recently, reality television shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty have turned the lives of poor, rural white families into a form of mass entertainment, often reinforcing the most damaging stereotypes of them as ignorant, bizarre, and uncivilized. This modern fascination continues the long tradition of treating the poor not as fellow citizens, but as a spectacle to be consumed, judged, and kept at a distance.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash is that the United States has never been a classless society. The cherished national myth of equal opportunity and upward mobility has served to mask a 400-year history of systemic class-based prejudice and marginalization. The figure of the poor white is not an exception to the American story but is, in fact, central to it—a constant reminder of the ideals we profess but have consistently failed to practice.

The book challenges us to look past the comforting narratives we tell ourselves. It forces a confrontation with an uncomfortable truth: the people we have labeled as "other," as "waste," as "trash," are not separate from the American identity. As Isenberg concludes, we are obsessed with the labels we assign to the neighbors we wish to ignore, telling ourselves, "They are not like us." But they are. And, whether we like it or not, they are a fundamental part of our shared history.