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

by Nancy Isenberg

The fear of promiscuous poor women led eugenics reformers to push for the construction of additional asylums to house feebleminded white women. In this effort, they deployed the term “segregation,” the same as was used by southerners to enforce white-black separation. The “passing” female was not a new trope either: it borrowed from the other southern fear of the passing mulatto, who might marry into a prominent family. Passing also conjured the old English fears of the class interloper and unregulated social mobility—the house servant seducing the lord of the manor.59 Even with such racial overtones, the major target of eugenicists was the poor white woman. Goddard’s description of the female moron as one lacking forethought, vitality, or any sense of shame perfectly replicated Reconstruction writers’ portrayal of white trash. Davenport felt the best policy was to quarantine dangerous women during their fertile years. How this policy prescription led to sterilization is rather more calculated: interested politicians and eager reformers concluded that it was cheaper to operate on women than to house them in asylums for decades. Southern eugenicists in particular argued that sterilization helped the economy by sending poor women back into the population safely neutered but still able to work at menial jobs.