“Trailer Trash”
Some years ago, I had a friend who lived in a trailer park next to the freeway in Benicia, California. She had just come through a divorce, and lived there with her daughter. One day I stopped by with her ex-husband to pick up his daughter for the weekend. His daughter wasn’t ready when we got there — she was middle-school-age then, and therefore took longer to get ready than probably Mariah Carey does before a show — so we had a little time to kill.
We sat near the driveway at the entrance into the trailer park, and there were a couple of little girls, maybe five or six years old, helping each other making mud pies across the way. It was the kind of scene that melts your heart to see, and we watched them and remembered a little bit what it was like to be that young and care free.
Our nostalgia was interrupted by a couple of guys walking past the entrance, who looked in and made some joke about “trailer trash” and about how mom and dad were probably sister and brother.
The two girls flinched, but said nothing; I could see a wounding shame descend on them like a shroud. The girls stood up and tried to wipe the mud from their hands; it seemed as if they were trying to wash away not just physical mud, but also the comparative deprivation and stigma of their lives in that place. That moment helped to teach them to be ashamed of their very selves – those two little girls learned that they were “trash”; that is a terrible thing to tell someone.
The way we treat poor people in this country is shameful – namely a harsh, merciless judgement that they are lazy and deserve their lot. I’ve heard Jay Leno glibly use the term “trailer trash.” This is appalling to me.
To stigmatize poverty is pretty much the opposite of Catholic behavior and belief; can you really imagine Mother Theresa using the term “trailer trash?” Or tolerating it if she heard a member of her order using it?
Comments are closed.
“The way we treat poor people in this country is shameful”
Yes, it is. It’s even worse than most realize. They are judged as not needed and unwanted. On the other hand:
The way we treat wealthy people in this country is shameful.
The Kenneth Lay’s of the world are judged as intelligent, morally upstanding, and community leaders. Look how difficult it was to reject him. Look at how many are reluctant to take action against Wall Street.
The way we treat the poor and the way we treat the wealthy are rooted in our Calvinistic heritage. This heritage shapes attitudes and national policy across the board.
Trailer trash isn’t meant to be all inclusive of the poor. It typically denoted those unwilling to conform to social norms. An old example would have been bra straps hanging out from one’s shirt. Growing up, I heard the phrase or the equivalent of “You may be poor, but that doesn’t mean you can’t act with dignity.”
The following character string appeared in the comment box of Minion’s most recent post
The remnant of the GOP is the white trash party.
courtesy one of your contributors.
MZ – Is it possible that at least some poor folks don’t “act with dignity” in part because they believe they are “trash” and thus don’t deserve it? I know at least two little girls who maybe got that message.
The concept of “trailer trash” is offensive, but “white trash” doesn’t stigmatize anyone other than the people who are referred to as “white trash.”
Art Deco,
“The remnant of the GOP is the white trash party.
courtesy one of your contributors.”
Let’s hope the entire GOP wasn’t stigmatized!!!
[Anonymous comments are not allowed.]
Matt Talbot,
I avoid acknowledging such things, because if I were to indulge in the habit myself, I wouldn’t have been able to become a semi-productive adult. The actual targeting and manipulation of children I do find maddening.
Oh, my God, this is probably the most hurtful thing I’ve read in these threads in a long, long time.
Perhaps you have to work with children, as I do–or, at least have a very vivid connection with your own childhood memories–to understand the crippling effect of a comment like that on a child.
It would have been better, in the long run, for those two louts to have taken a two-by-four and BEATEN those little girls, so long as they didn’t explain WHY they were beating them!
I mean EXACTLY what I just said: what those guys said about them and their families will now fester in the girls’ memories for the rest of their lives. What the guys did was MONSTROUS!
I worked two years in a partial hospitalization program in the South Hills Health System in Pittsburgh in ’74 and ’75. It was my first counseling job and, Digby, I agree with you. Children can heal from physical wounds to their bodies. The emotional wounds will actually physically alter how the child’s brain will develop and influence her or his sense of self and sense of belonging for a lifetime if there is nobody who can offset the damage done to them.
Gerald, you have seen the results of this. Children are in a such a vulnerable state due to the nature of their developing neurobiology that is responding to the environmental influences every moment of their lives and wiring itself accordingly, thus, unconsciously the hardware in which the soul relates to self and others is being freed or imprisoned within a sense of love and belonging or not loved and living isolated in fear and self-hate.
This can happen at any socio-economic level. The guys who verbally abused the girls came from an environment that trashed their minds. I see the victims of this childhood abuse everyday with the adults who come to see me. The wrong people are in therapy.
I think I will have to take steroids and start pumping iron and turn into Arnold as in Kindergarten Cop.
There are no small hurts with children and those who inflict those hurts tend to be hardened in their lack of compassion for the suffering of others because they have hardened themselves to their own vulnerability.
One of the things I would like to add — sometimes there are “aspects” of “stereotypes” which might be true, but it is because the people involved have been forced into that situation — the people in charge look at those they subjugate as sub-human, and so make sure the cycles repeat themselves, and the people act as what they classify as “sub-human” to justify their exclusion from normal society. This is not saying they are sub-human, but sometimes the “graces of society” are not learned because they are not taught, and it is willfully done that these people are not taught these graces. Those who need to survive, and not taught any other way, will do what is necessary, even if it seems uncouth. But what really is uncouth is the system which makes this happen, not the people.
What is interesting for me to ponder is the reality of the evolving understanding of human development. For example, within our dna there exists the social history and an instinctive understanding of where one belongs in that system. There is also an instinctive sense of interpersonal power or weakness within that genetic predisposition. The environment then strengthens that predisposition or influences a different gene expression depending on the evolution of awareness of those adults in that particular environment.
The system is the result of human evolution or lack of which can be revealed through the observation of behavior and policies that promote competition or solidarity. In other words, love is either being acted out or not and this is clearly observable within the system we live in.
Don’t get so worked up about those kids. It’s horrible, but it’s not the end of the world for them. We didn’t live in a trailer, but we were the poorest people in the neighborhood … so yeah, we got the “trash” remark now and then. One time I found those words and others spray painted on our driveway.
I wasn’t ashamed, or embarassed, or angry. It made me ponder the human condition, and I found it interesting to observe the reaction of other people to it (my parents, the police, friends, people walking by.)
I actually felt sorry for whoever did it. We were not a religious family, and I was not a particularly thoughtful kid. But I can’t point to any part of me that was “changed” (for the worse,) by that experience. Maybe I’m unconscious of it, or I’m too close to see it. Or maybe it was just grace.
“David Nickol Says: The concept of “trailer trash” is offensive, but “white trash” doesn’t stigmatize anyone other than the people who are referred to as “white trash.”
Is that comment merely inane or is it prejudiced?
I can’t decide.
Well, good for you, Lizzy, but not all children are as hard-boiled as you obviously are. I know, I work with kids, and remarks like that damage MOST children irreperably–generally in ways they can’t even articulate, but which affect their relationships with others from then on. I could tell you so many stories…
Yeah, I work with kids too. I teach literacy to the ones who have fallen behind in the DC public schools. At least I did, for 3 yeras, until I got sick.
Kids are more resiliant than you think. Anyway, they don’t want or need pity or talk about how they’re “damaged” goods. Nope. Destruction comes when kids hear comments about how circumstances have done them “irreperable” harm, believe those comments, and turn to anger or despair.
digbydolben Says:
“It would have been better, in the long run, for those two louts to have taken a two-by-four and BEATEN those little girls, so long as they didn’t explain WHY they were beating them!”
– have you ever been beaten unconscious with clubs? I have; more than once, in fact, if you count ‘semi-conscious’. I’ve also been flogged with split-bamboo canes and have had people try to kill me.
I can assure you from personal experience that it is… how shall I put this politely… much, much more unpleasant to be beaten with clubs, etc., than to have someone make a cutting remark about you.
In my experience, people who say that wounding remarks are worse than physical pain haven’t had much physical pain (or fear of death) inflicted on them. Or missed many meals.
The guys were jerks. The world is full of jerks, and guess what? It always will be, Original Sin being what it is — the only dogma with substantial objective evidence in its favor, as Chesterton observed.
One simply has to learn to live with it. And you know something? You -can- learn to live with that.
As opposed to having your head beaten in, or your throat slit, or starving to death, or getting diptheria or HIV. You don’t learn to live with those things because they kill you. Malnutrition and rickets and diseases that don’t -quite- kill you are also hard to live with, though people do.
These are real, serious problems. Having your feelings hurt? Not so much.
ockraz Says:
“but “white trash” doesn’t stigmatize anyone other than the people who are referred to as “white trash.”
Is that comment merely inane or is it prejudiced?”
– oh, prejudiced, certainly. There’s a useful mental exercise you can run through whenever someone uses an ethnic or racial epithet. Just switch it out; black for white, white for black, or substitute Jew or Oriental or whatever.
If it sounds obviously skanky when you switch terms, it was skanky to begin with.
I won’t bother responding to the cold-hearted S.M. Stirling, except to say that I wouldn’t let him near any of my students. But, judging by what he’s written, I don’t think he’d really want to be involved in education anyway.
What Lillabet says here, however, deserves further comment:
Anyway, they don’t want or need pity or talk about how they’re “damaged” goods. Nope. Destruction comes when kids hear comments about how circumstances have done them “irreperable” harm, believe those comments, and turn to anger or despair.
I ENTIRELY agree with you, if you’re referring to kids’ ACTIONS or BEHAVIOUR. Believe me, in my profession, I’m considered by almost everybody I work with to be “politically incorrect.” At the beginning of an IB English course, I ask the students’ permission to be brutally honest about the quality of their individual pieces of work, especially their compositions. I am EXTREMELY sparing of what my colleagues falsely label “positive reinforcement,” and praise only what I know my students know is their best work. I don’t inflate grades and I don’t write recommendations for kids who’ve treated me, their peers or the discipline we’re studying with disrespect. You have no idea how many conflicts all the positions I’m mentioning here to you cause me to have with corrupt school administrators, who just want the kids’ parents out of their hair and who don’t give a damn how much cynicism is caused by laudatory comments that are meaningless. You’re simply preaching to the choir, Lillabet.
However, there is a BIG difference between criticising individual efforts, productions or performances and categorising an individual; students UNDERSTAND fully when they haven’t done or given their best. However, many of them TRUST their teachers, mentors, parents–perhaps a little too much–and take their judgments of their talents, abilities, etc. very seriously, indeed.
One more thing: I’m not really a believer in the “meritocratic” syndrome that pervades so much of government, academia and social work these days. I have absolutely no difficulty in telling a COLLEAGUE that his or her favourite student can’t do my kind of academic work because he’s too “stupid” for it. That gets me into a bit of hot water now and again, until I inform the colleague that I actually like and RESPECT the “stupid” one more than the eager, mercenary beaver who cares only about grades and publicly disrespects the discipline and his peers in the classroom–and would much rather write the letter of recommendation for the “stupid” one who TRIES. Ultimately, my “judgments” of my students (which are private, or in their college recommendations) are based on CHARACTER, not academic skills or mental abilities.
Stirling,
I agree. There is a technical sense in which one could argue that the statement is merely inane- in that it states a possible tautology (‘the only people stigmatized by a label which is inherently stigmatizing, are the people to whom the label is applied’). I think that even that would be a false claim, however, given that a prejudiced term attaches a stigma to the person who uses it in the eyes of those who disapprove of the prejudice.
digbydolben Says:
I won’t bother responding to the cold-hearted S.M. Stirling
– I must make allowances in the interests of charity. It’s obvious you’ve lead a very, very sheltered life and have no idea of how most human beings live and have lived.
So have a lot of people on this continent and in Europe, of course.
When I got back here — I spent most of my adolescence in the Third World, Africa particularly, since my father was a foreign aid worker at the time — one of my strongest immediate impressions was that “these people don’t have real problems, so they obsess about trifles”. Haven’t seen much since to alter that.
>But, judging by what he’s written, I don’t think he’d really want to be involved in education anyway.
– actually, the Coast Guard academy had me in to give talks to the students, after they made one of my novels required course reading.
And I’ve given a good many workshops for aspiring writers.
S.M. – Why did you say what you said:
Well, to say that “having your feelings hurt” is not as grave as being victimized by violence is something I’d personally agree with. But it seems you go further, when you say:
That I would not agree with…or, well, it’s true and it’s not true. Original sin is a fact of life, yes, but pointing out the corrosive effect of stigmatizing language, and suggesting that we do better, is a worthy excercise, I think.
I see similar arguments made about war, poverty, racism, abortion and a myriad of other plagues on the kingdom of God: A sort of hand-waving “Well, what is one to do? It’s a fallen world…”
Aren’t we called to “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect?”
To say that people sin because of original sin is obvious. To imply (if you are implying) that we just need to accept that as a fact of life and move on is, from a practical standpoint, necessary, but I think it is good to point to the real harm (and it is real harm) that is done by incidents like the one I describe.
S.M. Stirling,
“It’s obvious you’ve lead a very, very sheltered life and have no idea of how most human beings live and have lived.”
Aside from your obvious point — people in the U.S. and Europe are too often naive — what is the purpose of your statement? Are you saying we should import some of these practices from Africa so as to better appreciate the civility of our own society? Or is it meant to show that the presence of harsh treatment in Africa — much harsher than anything we can dream of — demonstrates the triviality of what we deem harsh treatment in the U.S.?
Are you saying that some Americans are just being hysterical when they call attention to the use of the term “trailer trash”? I’m not sure of your point.
It seems that the backdrop of the original post, and perhaps Digby comments, could be couched in terms of the following question: “What kind of people do we want to become?”
Given that backdrop, I think it is right to consider how dreadful people treat one another in the United States. We have a rich history of social violence that should be a cause for shame and alarm. What good does it do to say that matters are worse in Somalia or Rwanda?
You know what I think, Matt?
I think that a lot of American Catholics who nominally accept the doctrines of the Catholic and Apostolic Church are actually living in a spiritual culture which is not at ALL coloured by the theological affinities or the traditional social imperatives of Catholic Christendom.
This guy, who lives in New Mexico, for instance, has as his ordinary one of the cruelest Catholic hierarchs in America, someone who won’t even provide his employees with unemployment insurance benefits, and who orders his school administrators to SCRUPULOUSLY AVOID telling them this when they agree to go to work for him. The Archbishop of New Mexico is, himself, something out of a Victorian novel–an authoritarian who banns canonically observant “interfaith dialogue” from his schools because “knowing about another faith’s beliefs” might possibly “weaken” the “faith” of one of New Mexico’s Catholic high schoolers.
I know all this because I used to work for this tyrant. I think that S.M. Stirling probably fits in quite nicely in one of the tyrant’s parishes.
Digbydolben:
“New Mexico…has as his ordinary one of the cruelest Catholic hierarchs in America, someone who won’t even provide his employees with unemployment insurance benefits, and who orders his school administrators to SCRUPULOUSLY AVOID telling them this when they agree to go to work for him. The Archbishop of New Mexico is, himself, something out of a Victorian novel–an authoritarian who banns canonically observant “interfaith dialogue” from his schools because “knowing about another faith’s beliefs” might possibly “weaken” the “faith” of one of New Mexico’s Catholic high schoolers”.
Digby, is this Abp. Michael Sheehan of Santa Fe [which is the name of the archdiocese in which I live]?
Indeed it is, and, in these livejournal entries, I am the “friend” who supplied this information to a friend of mine living in Britain:
http://nmsavanarola.livejournal.com/
Your ordinary is not only an unjust employer. He is also a protector and enabler of criminal pedophiles!
oh, prejudiced, certainly. There’s a useful mental exercise you can run through whenever someone uses an ethnic or racial epithet. Just switch it out; black for white, white for black, or substitute Jew or Oriental or whatever.
S.M Sterling and ockraz,
Actually, I was being a little facetious when I wrote my message on “white trash,” but I would say what is objectionable about the term is not what it says about white people but the fact that what it really seems to mean is “not black, but trash nevertheless.”
Here’s an interesting couple of paragraphs on the term from Wikipedia:
digbydolben Says August 2, 2009 at 4:47 pm
[Whether the bishop criticized is Abp Sheehan of Santa Fe].
“Indeed it is, and, in these live journal entries, I am the “friend” who supplied this information to a friend of mine living in Britain:
“http://nmsavanarola.livejournal.com/
“Your ordinary is not only an unjust employer. He is also a protector and enabler of criminal pedophiles!”
I have followed the reference. Ouch!
It also seems that his immediate predecessor – Robert Sanchez – had to resign for carrying on with 3 or 4 women [and it has been suggested, covering up abusers of boys].
It appears that current incumbent is employing the [lawyers'] technique of stone-walling, whose chief effect is to give credibility to the accusations.
Except in the case of Our Lord, one may indeed say “silentio assentio”.
Here I was looking to a calm retirement.