Politicians such as the mudsill president Abraham Lincoln and good ole’ boy Lyndon Johnson helped thrust the poor white man out of the persistent trap of restricted social mobility. Images of poor whites, regardless of what they were called, were in a constant state of flux from the antebellum period to the verge of the twenty-first century.

The second section of this study, “The Degeneration of the American Breed,” focuses on how white trash continued to change throughout America’s youth. Isenberg tracks the different usages of slang terms over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries that come to notoriously denote poor rural whites, such as 'crackers,' 'hillbillies,' and of course, 'white trash.' Examples of white trash were prevalent in political discourse and popular culture alike, yet Americans continued to deny the existence of a skewed class hierarchy. The colonial system imposed a class hierarchy based on wealth, pedigree, and land ownership, which never seem to truly leave American soil. The first section of Isenberg’s study, “To Begin the World Anew,” focuses on America’s infant years, from English colonization to Independence and westward expansion. This study aims to highlight the blatant existence and perpetuation of America’s class system throughout its detailed examination. The fables spun by the Founding Fathers, which have come to be accepted as historical fact, consistently ignored the existence of an unequal class hierarchy in America. The history here can sometimes be dense, but the author delivers a thought-provoking discourse on an important social issue.Isenberg begins her journey into the origins of American class hierarchy by providing the reader with an aptly named introduction section, 'Fables We Forget By,' which serves as a gateway to her forthcoming arguments. Turning to the present day, Isenberg covers everything from Bill Clinton to country-boy culture to the rise of redneck reality TV. Somewhere along the way, though, not everyone got the memo, and the stigma of coming from “white trash” still exists-American exceptionalism be damned.

Benjamin Franklin continued this train of thought, believing that idleness could be bred out of people.

Poor indentured servants were sent overseas in droves, with the hope that a life of hard work would train their offspring to be better members of society. The narrative goes back to pre-colonial times, when Great Britain realized America could function as one giant workhouse. But what about terms denoting class? Isenberg takes a close look at the history of poor whites in America and asks readers why it is seemingly acceptable to use such terms as white trash, crackers, and rednecks to describe this group of people. Most people are well aware of what terms are not acceptable when talking about different races or ethnicities.

White trash the 400