Stereotyping and Stigmatizing of Poor Whites in Today's USA

Concepción Parrondo Carretero

doi:10.13189/lls.2017.050605

Abstract

The stigma once imposed upon poor whites (also known by the terms of 'white trash,' 'cracker,' 'red neck,' or 'hillbilly,' among others) still lives on in a specific type of poor, notorious for their laziness, dirt-eating, propensity to criminality, sexual perversity, consanguinity, feeblemindedness, and chronic disease portability. It is through mass media communications that this group has been placed on the margins of a capitalist interest-driven market economy in the hands of the dominant whites who dictate the rules by which all members of society are to abide. It is no longer the account of the traveler or the written text what can be damaging to the public image of a social group, but a much powerful vehicle of communication that attracts large numbers and travels at the speed of light. As an image is worth a thousand words, the visual impact created by TV or the cinema has no equal. This paper aims to examine the social stereotyping and stigmatizing of poor whites (the bad type) in mass media communications through the analysis of two films (Deliverance 1972 and Monster 2003), a documentary (The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia 2009), and a reality TV series (Here Comes Honey Boo Boo 2012) to ultimately come to the realization that social stigmatizing is very much alive in the United States of the 21st century.

Highlights

The Origins of the Poor Whites’ Stereotyped TraitsThe concept of slavery was no novelty in the colonies but was adopted by those settlers who first arrived in the New World
The film industry and TV have taken an active role in socially stigmatizing poor whites in the past thirty years, as shown in Deliverance and Monster films, as well as in Here Comes Honey Boo Boo reality series and The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia documentary
While the above-mentioned films concentrated on the scary, primal, abhorrent and appalling side of the poor whites, the TV shows exposed a much more detrimental side to this social class: Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia let audiences experience the life of the poor whites first hand, enticing them to either mocking or condemning their existence

Summary

Introduction

Intelligence studies were performed on the poor, considered a threat to society because of their laziness, reluctance to work, propensity to criminality and disgusting habits such as dirt-eating Science resolved that such a trait, feeblemindedness, was more noticeable in rural areas in the South of the US. Scientists’ opinions over the causes and consequences of the epidemic of the hookworm was divided in two schools of thought: the eugenicists, who believed the hookworm was the cause of having been born poor white and trash; and the member doctors of the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, who thought that the hookworm was the result of the dire conditions poor whites were forced to live under, While the former were in favor of forced sterilization and even institutionalization, the latter proposed a sanitary campaign which included medical treatment and the teaching of healthy habits, especially in the areas of personal hygiene, good housekeeping and proper child-rearing. Comes Honey Boo Boo (2012) and the documentary The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia (2009) are brought to discussion in an effort to come to the realization that social stigmatizing is very much alive in the United States of the 21st century

The Visual Arts and the Concept of Displacement

Conclusions