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. 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.

White trash 400 years