“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?