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Brad has long since recovered from the pizza joint fiasco and now supports his family as an operations manager for a building supplies company, often working 10 or 12-hour days. Before she became a full-time mom and homemaker, Kim worked as a manicurist at a salon in Fort Mill. She renews her manicure license every year for "something to fall back on" once all the kids are in school.
Kim was one of the few people who live in a trailer park who agreed to be interviewed for this story. When making initial queries to various trailer park residents, the responses I received ranged from puzzlement to suspicion to outright hostility. The stigma associated with living in a trailer park obviously runs deep, and most people were understandably defensive given the negative stereotypes - and the fact that I represented the media, which has led the way in perpetuating those negative images.
Nonetheless, Kim felt the stereotypes so misrepresented her and her family, the issue warranted her input. She stresses that she and her family have enjoyed life at Twin Lakes Mobile Homes, and with the exception of a couple of unruly kids with mostly absent or apathetic parents, they've never had any problems.
However, there are times when she feels self-conscious about her home. "My kids are involved with sports teams in Fort Mill, and there are some parents there who you might say are well-off. When their kids want to come over and play and they ask where we live, I feel a little funny saying a mobile home park. Some people just automatically think you must be poor."
Unlike some mobile home parks, most residents at Twin Lakes Mobile Homes own their trailers, and pay rent only on the lots. Kim says she hopes to move into a "regular, bigger house," not because of other people's perceptions, but to better accommodate her growing family. "It's not about where you live, it's about who you are and how you live your life. I see our trailer just like any other home in a subdivision; ours is just shaped a little different."
What's wrong with you people?
Just as the black community is stereotypically blamed for national problems like crime, drugs, and failings in public education, poor whites are regarded as the purveyors of other societal ills. The white working class is often blamed for everything from bad fashion, obesity, incest and child abuse to alcoholism, spousal abuse and out-of-wedlock motherhood, not to mention a never-ending obsession with Elvis. But the truth is that many of society's problems are just as common behind respectable suburbia's white picket fences, and many soccer moms or corporate execs share the same ills as the trailer park untouchables, most notably in the area of domestic violence.
"We get calls for help from every socioeconomic level," says Jane Taylor, coordinator of services for the Shelter for Battered Women in Charlotte. "We routinely talk to women who are a vice president's wife or the professor's wife. That's a very large part of our caseload. If we shelter 400 women and children a year, we'll work with twice that many who don't come here to stay, but contact us for guidance and advice. The so-called "working class' woman is going to be more inclined to call the police and use our shelter than the woman in Myers Park who doesn't want the police to pull up in her front yard. The media picks up on the working class stereotype simply because it's more visible."
Karen Parker, project coordinator for the Domestic Violence Healthcare project at Carolinas Medical Center, says she sees women from across the economic spectrum who are victims of domestic violence. "One minute we might see a woman who is low-income and living in public housing, and the next minute we might see an upper-class Dilworth mother whose husband is a prominent businessman," says Parker. "I've had that literally happen where, back-to-back, you get these two extremes."
While all cultural and ethnic groups share working-class roots, there's an unspoken assumption that if you're white, that's all the resources you need to be successful; if you haven't made it, then you must be some kind of goober or hillbilly.
"Terms like "hillbilly' are a class marker," says retired Appalachian State University (ASU) professor Dr. Jerry Williamson, who has spent much of his career researching Southern types and stereotypes in the media and culture. "The hillbilly represents the failure of white advancement. There's a definite racial component to it. How can you be white and be like that? You have no excuse for being poor. In some ways it's a double stigma."