
''Trailer trash'' is a derogatory
North American English
North American English (NAmE, NAE) is the most generalized variety (linguistics), variety of the English language as spoken in the United States and Canada. Because of their related histories and cultures, plus the similarities between the pron ...
term for
poor people
Poverty is the state of having few material possessions or little income. Poverty can have diverse social, economic, and political causes and effects. When evaluating poverty in ...
living in a
trailer or a
mobile home
A mobile home (also known as a house trailer, park home, trailer, or trailer home) is a prefabricated structure, built in a factory on a permanently attached chassis before being transported to site (either by being towed or on a trailer). Us ...
. It is particularly used to denigrate
white people
White is a Race (human categorization), racialized classification of people and a Human skin color, skin color specifier, generally used for people of Ethnic groups in Europe, European origin, although the definition can vary depending on con ...
living in such circumstances
History
In the mid-20th century, poor whites who could not afford to buy suburban-style
tract housing
Tract housing is a type of housing development in which multiple similar houses are built on a tract (area) of land that is subdivided into smaller lots. Tract housing developments are found in suburb developments that were modeled on the " Lev ...
began to purchase mobile homes, which were not only cheaper, but which could be easily relocated if work in one location ran out. These – sometimes by choice and sometimes through local
zoning laws
Zoning is a method of urban planning in which a municipality or other tier of government divides land into areas called zones, each of which has a set of regulations for new development that differs from other zones. Zones may be defined for a si ...
– gathered in trailer parks, and the people who lived in them became known as "trailer trash" with the term dating to at least 1952.
[Harold H. Martin, “Don't Call Them Trailer Trash,” The Saturday Evening Post, August 2, 1952, Vol. 225, No. 5. ] Despite many of them having jobs, albeit sometimes itinerant ones, the character flaws that had been perceived in
poor white trash in the past were transferred to trailer trash, and trailer camps or parks were seen as being inhabited by retired people, migrant workers, and, generally, the poor. By 1968, a survey found that only 13% of those who owned and lived in mobile homes had
white collar White collar may refer to:
* White-collar worker, a salaried professional or an educated worker who performs semi-professional office, administrative, and sales-coordination tasks, as opposed to a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor ...
jobs.
[ Isenberg, Nancy (2016) ''White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America'' New York: Penguin. pp.240-47 ]
Trailers got their start in the 1930s, and their use proliferated during the housing shortage of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, when the Federal government used as many as 30,000 of them to house defense workers, soldiers and sailors throughout the country, but especially around areas with a large military or defense presence, such as
Mobile, Alabama and
Pascagoula, Mississippi
Pascagoula ( ) is a city in Jackson County, Mississippi, United States. It is the principal city of the Pascagoula Metropolitan Statistical Area, and is part of the Gulfport–Biloxi–Pascagoula Combined Statistical Area. The population was 22 ...
. In her book ''Journey Through Chaos'', reporter
Agnes Meyer of ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...
'' travelled throughout the country, reporting on the condition of the "neglected rural areas", and described the people who lived in the trailers, tents and shacks in such areas as malnourished, unable to read or write, and generally ragged. The workers who came to Mobile and Pascagoula to work in the shipyards there were from the backwoods of the South, "subnormal swamp and mountain folk" whom the locals described as "vermin"; elsewhere, they were called "squatters". They were accused of having loose morals, high
illegitimacy
Legitimacy, in traditional Western common law, is the status of a child born to parents who are legally married to each other, and of a child conceived before the parents obtain a legal divorce. Conversely, ''illegitimacy'', also known as '' ...
and
crime
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Ca ...
rates and of allowing
prostitution to thrive in their "Hillbilly Havens" and letting their children go undisciplined, causing high
juvenile delinquency
Juvenile delinquency, also known as juvenile offending, is the act of participating in unlawful behavior as a minor or individual younger than the statutory age of majority. In the United States of America, a juvenile delinquent is a person ...
rates. The trailers themselves – sometimes purchased second- or third-hand – were often unsightly, unsanitary and dilapidated, causing communities to zone them away from the more desirable neighborhoods, which meant away from schools, stores, and other necessary facilities, often literally on the other sides of the railroad tracks.
See also
*
Good ol' boy
An old boy network (also known as old boys' network, ol' boys' club, old boys' club, old boys' society, good ol' boys club, or good ol' boys system) is an informal system in which wealthy men with similar social or educational background help ...
*
Hillbilly
Hillbilly is a term (often derogatory) for people who dwell in rural, mountainous areas in the United States, primarily in southern Appalachia and the Ozarks. The term was later used to refer to people from other rural and mountainous areas west ...
*
Redneck
''Redneck'' is a derogatory term chiefly, but not exclusively, applied to white Americans perceived to be crass and unsophisticated, closely associated with rural whites of the Southern United States.Harold Wentworth, and Stuart Berg Flexner, '' ...
*
White trash
White trash is a derogatory racial and class-related slur used in American English to refer to poor white people, especially in the rural southern United States. The label signifies a social class inside the white population and especially a ...
References
Further reading
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External links
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{{Ethnic slurs
American phraseology
Class-related slurs
English phrases
Ethnic and racial stereotypes
Stereotypes of the working class
Working class in the United States
Stereotypes of white Americans