White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

As we embark on our journey through the hidden history of class in America, we begin in the murky, often grim origins of the colonial era. The English viewed America not as a land of opportunity but as a vast wasteland, a place waiting to be tamed and made productive. But this land was not empty; it was inhabited by Native peoples whose connection to the soil was dismissed as primitive and illegitimate. To the colonists, land ownership was inseparable from cultivation—only through hard labor could one claim rightful possession.

More strikingly, the English conceived of many of their own countrymen—the poor, the vagrants, the convicts—as 'waste people,' human refuse to be removed from England and put to work in the colonies. This brutal calculus turned human beings into mere economic assets, expendable and bound to labor under harsh conditions.

Indentured servitude became the backbone of this system. Young men and women, often orphans or debtors, sold years of their lives in exchange for passage to an uncertain future. Yet these contracts were not mere agreements but instruments of control, with servants treated as chattel—sold, inherited, and punished at will. Children of servants could be bound into servitude, reflecting a system that commodified not only labor but human life itself.

Life in early settlements was harsh and unforgiving. Many succumbed to disease, starvation, and brutal working conditions. Homes were rudimentary, often no better than animal pens, and the landscape itself was unforgiving—a swampy, mosquito-ridden wilderness where survival was a daily struggle.

Yet, amid this bleakness, the seeds of America's class system took root. Land was the ultimate prize, the measure of freedom and status. Those who owned land were masters; those who labored without land were bound to servitude and poverty.

From these early days, a pattern emerged: a small elite monopolized land and power, while a vast underclass of poor laborers remained marginalized and exploited. This foundation of class and inequality would echo through centuries of American history.

As we reflect on these origins, we see the complex interplay of land, labor, and human worth that shaped the young colonies. The colonial project was as much about managing people as it was about cultivating land, with class distinctions enforced through law, custom, and brutal reality.

Let us now turn to how these ideas evolved in the Enlightenment and Revolutionary periods, where thinkers grappled with liberty, labor, and the promise of a new society. Their visions would shape, and sometimes obscure, the realities of class in America.