white trash

This article or section is missing citations or needs footnotes. Using inline citations helps guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies.

White trash is a derogatory term with a classist component targeted at white people with low social status, poor prospects, or low levels of education. To call someone white trash is to accuse a white person of being economically, educationally and culturally bankrupt.

Origins and contexts

The term white trash began in the Baltimore and Washington, DC area in the 1820s post-revolutionary war reconstruction boom when many poor people immigrated into the area and white and black semi-skilled workers were competing for the same jobs, resources, and even marriage partners (Wray 2007). The origins of the term may come from a racially segregated past, but modern usage of the term places emphasis on the word trash, or the labeling of certain categories of whites as socially worthless.

The term white trash first came into common use in the 1830s as a pejorative used by upper-class United States southerners of all races against poor non-Latino whites^{[citation needed]}. It was synonymous with the slurs "sand hiller" and "clay eater". White trash were hyperbolically assumed to farm ineptly on poor land, and therefore resort to eating clay in order to survive. The term involves both behavioral characteristics, such as mannerisms, lifestyle and overt racial characteristics.^{[citation needed]}

In 1854, Harriet Beecher Stowe entitled a chapter "Poor White Trash" in her defense of her abolitionist classic Uncle Tom's Cabin called Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin. Stowe tells us that slavery not only produces "degraded, miserable slaves," but also poor whites who are even more degraded and miserable. These whites were forced by the plantation system to struggle for subsistence. Beyond economic factors, Stowe traces this class to the lack of schools and churches in their community, and says that both blacks and whites in the area look down on these "poor white trash" (Wray 2007). Max Weber described white trash as "[those] not owning slaves" compared with the planters in the Southern States. White trash were the only type of white people that didn't have many more rights than black people. Many people use it against West Virginians because of the impoverished nature of some residents in certain sections of the state.

A related stereotype is that of the redneck, although they differ considerably. A rural middle-class person may proudly characterize himself as a redneck (for example, the comedian Jeff Foxworthy uses his redneck persona as part of his act), but might be genuinely offended if called white trash, which is a more pejorative, geographically different term.

Permissive attitudes toward this phrase have softened somewhat in recent years and recently some have self-described themselves as white trash, similar to racial slurs against other groups that are permissible only when self-directed, similar to black musicians or comedians referring to themselves as niggas.

White trash in literature

• In Sherwood Anderson's 1920 novel Poor White, a Southerner who thinks of himself as "poor white trash" makes his way as an inventor in a small Midwestern town.
• In Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel, and later the movie by the same name, Gone with the Wind, the term is used several times, always pejoratively, by both the black and white characters. Neighbor Emmy Slattery is described by Mammy as "poor white trash" when Ellen O'Hara goes to midwife her illegitimate baby.
• In Harper Lee's 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the Ewell family is referred to as "white trash."
• In Maya Angelou's 1969 autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she mentioned that the "powhitetrash" kids would come from down the hills and cause trouble at her grandmother's shop in Stamps, Arkansas.
• In Chuck Palahniuk's Diary Novel, Misty thinks herself as "white trash".

White trash in film

• 2000 Poor White Trash
• In Gone with the Wind, Mammy, played by Hattie McDaniel warns Scarlett O'Hara and her peers not to do certain things as it may associate them with "white trash."
• In The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter refers to Agent Clarice Starling as poor white trash: "Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one generation from poor white trash are you Agent Starling?" referring to her West Virginia origins and accent

See also

• List of ethnic slurs

Bibliography

• Berger, Maurice (2000). White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness. ISBN 0-374-52715-6.
• Goad, Jim (1998). The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies Hicks and White Trash Became Americas Scapegoats. ISBN 0-684-83864-8.
• Hartigan, John Jr (2005). Odd Tribes: Toward a Cultural Analysis of White People. Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3597-2
• Mickler, Ernest Matthew (1986). White Trash Cooking (Spiral-bound). Ten Speed Press. ISBN 0-89815-189-9
• Pitcher, Ben (2007). The Problem with White Trash - Review of M. Wray (2007) Not Quite White, Duke University Press. ISBN 0822338734. darkmatter journal
• Sullivan, Nell (2003). Academic Constructions of 'White Trash' , in: Adair, Vivyan Campbell; Dahlberg, Sandra L. (Ed.) (2003) Reclaiming Class. Women, Poverty, and the Promise of Higher Education in America. Temple University Press. ISBN 1-59213-021-6
• Webb, James (2004). "Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America". Broadway. ISBN 0-7679-1689-1
• Wray, Matt and Annalee Newitz, eds. (1997). White Trash: Race and Class in America. ISBN 0-415-91692-5.

Donate to Wikimedia