Deregionalize

Eugenics was the crucial vehicle for nationalizing and deregionalizing the stigmatypes of southern poor white trash. Previous chapters in this book aimed to track how particular words and phrases […] described, portrayed, and ultimately constructed poor white trash as a stigmatized and despised social group in the South […] However, there is little evidence before the end of Reconstruction that poor white trash was considered to be a problem social group that the nation as a whole needed to address for its safety and welfare.