For me, it’s occasionally coming up when I listen to comedians. A year back I also heard a story about a white person who grew up poor, became financially stable with a good job, and then punched down and started calling other white people “white trash.”
To me it’s obvious this is poor-shaming. But I have a feeling it’s far more complex than that. I’m not even white and I feel degraded whenever I come across those words. I barely know what it means, but it breaks my heart anyways to hear.
They are the lumpenproletariat. Marx wrote about them in the Communist Manifesto:
The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.
Marx predicted
The 1800’s were arguably (INarguably?) worse for the poor than today; it may sound like hyperbole for Marx to say society saw them as social scum, but science claimed that the poor and the mentally unwell needed to be killed or sterilized off for the sake of society; we’re talking about the era that birthed eugenics.
Conditions today are less drastic, but it doesn’t help that the poor and the mentally unwell have been demonized even today.
I’d say there’s a combination of this and the mentality mentioned in that (Steinbeck?) quote (paraphrasing cause I don’t remember it word for word): “socialism never took off in America because people envisioned themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires” at play.
the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue
What does this mean?
White trash is more than that, it’s typically referring to really crude, crass people that have a lack of common decency and have entitlement issues. Source: lived at many trailer parks and this kind of person is prevailent. There are many good people at trailer parks but there’s a certain type that are really some of the most revolting people you can meet.
this really just is a case of there are shitty people exactly like you described of every class. i really wouldn’t say at all there are more shitty poor people than shitty rich people. rich people being rich alone makes them fucking shitty. lots of the shitty things poor people do, rich people also do but they don’t get called on it, don’t get caught doing it, have a way of framing it as something classy. go drive through any rich neighborhood and you’re gonna find a bunch of people pilled out of their minds, drunk during the day, drugged out on any number of things. the difference is, in the trailer park, people tend to be outside their houses in these conditions where as in the rich part if they’re outside it’s in their fenced in back yard or in their massive plot of lands where you just wont see them or hear them
look no further than any starbucks drivethru if you wanna see rich people acting worse than however you’d think someone from the trailer park acts
All of this. Not many people would even think to call a shitty rich person white trash, it’s a term saved specifically for poor whites. And I feel like I only really hear other white people use it so that they can distance themselves from poverty because poverty is something to abhor
rich people also do but they don’t get called on it, don’t get caught doing it, have a way of framing it as something classy
So much this; when the rich do it, it’s laughed off or excused.
There was a major member of the British royal family who was revealed to be racist, and the guy who revealed it got death threats
Tbf, I do have different reactions to rich and poor people being super racist.
Rich people? Yeah no shit, that’s how you got here. It’s not acceptable but it’s understandable. My enemies ontologically evil.
Poor people? You’re a class traitor. You should know better. You’re not even benefiting from this arrangement but you hate minorities so much you’re willing to do volunteer work about it.
That is, in fact, very true. My fiance worked at Starbucks and the horror stories she’d tell were pretty close to the ‘shitty white trash asshole’. It’s completely true that no matter what class we talk about there are shitty people of course. Although I still maintain that there is a certain swath of people that exhibit the tendencies of white trash and just run with it. There’s shitty rmiddle class/rich white people and then there’s Pam that lives in a trailer, drinks malt liquor and demonizes blacks as ‘ruthless animals’ while she smokes meth in her living room. That’s the true ‘white trash’ for you.
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Also lived in many trailer parks and I agree with you. Poor shaming is definitely a (large) part of the term white trash but it’s not the only factor.
There are “cultural” factors as well, things like smoking cigarettes indoors, beating your kids, not getting your dogs neutered, hoarding, and willingness to call people the N word
It’s not purely a class distinction and I know that because 90% of the time I’ve heard that term used it’s an intra-class conflict, this is the person with the trailer they keep nice and clean with a lovely garden out front calling their neighbor white trash for letting their (unneutered) dog trample their flowers. Thats a real world example.
It’s not just living in a trailer, plenty of nice normal poor people live in trailers. It’s smoking cigarettes (or meth) inside that trailer and flying a confederate flag out front. And likely having a giant pickup truck that costs more than the trailer.
Yeah it’s kind of like the Chris Rock bit. There’s white people and then there’s white trash.
It’s racist because of the implication that the standard state for white people is “not trash” but pretty much everything is racist so idk how much grief it’s worth investing with.
It’s racist because of the implication that the standard state for white people is “not trash”
As opposed to nonwhites? Someone told me it’s implying that it’s expected that people are poor, except for when they’re white. It implies it’s weird to be poor if you’re white, but it’s at least somewhat expected when you’re a minority. So the term “white trash” is racist towards minority races… Must be why it hurts me deeply.
Eh, not completley true. My extremely abusive ex used to call me and my family white trash specifically to cause me harm
Oh it is definitely used as a slur against people who are just poor and struggling, but there are also the types I talked about that give poor people a bad name and are just unsavory people that are disgusting individuals and don’t care that they’re disrepectful and gross, in fact they revel in it.
You know how there’s “one of the good ones” for social minorities? There’s also “one of the bad ones” for social majorities. The specific implications are somewhat different, but “self-hating Jew” for anti-zionist (or not-adequately-zionist) Jews is sort of the same thing in Israel in the sense that it is used to dismiss members of the “superior race” who deviate from the racist’s image of what they should be.
Maybe a more general way to think about it is that white supremacy requires a certain positive characterization of whiteness as a high class, virtuous, cultured, and refined identity. When that fails to align with reality, the people who are counterexamples are called “white trash” to distinguish from classy whites.
Best illustration is 2 white supremacists, one conservative and one liberal, talking, when the conservative starts ranting about how rowdy and criminal the minorities are; the liberal argues back “it’s not just the minorities who are like that, there’s white trash too” i.e. white people can also be nonwhite!
It’s a stereotype beyond simply being poor, more or less the same meaning as ‘redneck’ but in a more derogatory way. It usually involves confederate flags (the racism is key), drinking (possibly meth), huge lifted trucks, a love for guns. While ‘rednecks’ often take pride in being redneck, they typically wouldn’t call themselves ‘white trash’ unless they were joking.
This is what a specific kind of liberal would call white trash. When I’ve heard it online it’s mostly just shitting on people for being poor.
Rednecks I know call other people white trash. Often in reference to their perceived drug use. Or to complain about things like having a bunch of broken down cars on their lawn.
The rednecks you know probably aren’t the people I’ve seen using it online.
It’s used as a tool of white supremacy to add a modifier to “white” to imply a underclass while differentiating it from a “white” ideal. Kind of like how white people are never sure if they should say “Mexican” when talking with/about people from Mexico because white american culture views it’s as a literal slur as it’s considered lower hierarchically than the pinnacle of “white”. It’s one of the many building blocks of white supremacy that serve to maintain “white” as the cultural peak.
Also following up- Nancy Isenberg has a great book on the topic - and has been on a number of podcasts if that’s more your jam.
https://archive.org/details/whitetrash400yea0000isen
Edit: though if we’re talking podcasts that thoroughly explore the subject - there are numerous old episodes of Trillbillies and Street Fight Radio that do so
I agree it’s a sad term and I don’t like it. Remember, the only people who are trash are the fash.
“White trash” has like 95% overlap with fash though.
White trash is a couple who smoke inside their trailer and beat their kids before driving to work in their $80k lifted pickup with a confederate flag decal
In fact the more I think about it, flying the confederate flag is probably the strongest “white trash” signifier there is, an explicitly fascist symbol.
It may as well just mean “Non-rich fascist”
There are people who grow up calling themselves white trash starting as babies and I just can’t accept this. It tears me up inside. It seems synonymous with a baby calling itself “the discarded.”
It’s probably better to hear from more than one viewpoint, but this was a major culture shock so to speak about me moving from lib-to-lefty.
What I can offer is the fact I am ‘white trash’ and have used the term a lot when call out nazis. Nazis know they’re cruel, callous people, and they fucking love it. Reminding them they are in the wrong will have those pigs laugh at how cruel they’re being. Any criticism that just boils down to “that’s not nice” is useless because they know they’re assholes and love it.
‘White trash’ is like the nazi equivalent of “bluehair”. They might not care they’re mean, but calling them inbred or slobs, or that they’re not as great as they think they are. Well, most of the time they’ll still laugh it off (we’re dealing with the most confident people on earth even if they don’t deserve an ounce of it). But you signaled that you find traits commonly seen as desirable to be undesirable, and sometimes this gets on their nerves, someone they view as inferior claiming they’re not just not superior, but the true inferiors. I just so happen to be stuck living with these types because I had the misfortune of being born and raised somewhere that isn’t a major city in a blue state.
Classism: the last remaining socially-acceptable prejudice
i fuckin wish lmao
I just woke up and I can’t clearly remember my history right now so I may be getting it wrong. I think it originally comes from the discarded labor force from US colonies. The people that they felt were too ignorant to learn, or too lazy were dumped in the middle of nowhere to fend for themselves. Sort of how the UK would ship their unwanted labor to Australia or the US. The rejects were seen as trash by the colonial administrators and landed gentry.
I can’t remember if one of those dumping grounds was the Great Dismal Swamp or not. I know indigenous people fled to the swamp to avoid colonists. Also escaped slaves (maroons) would make a life as well.
Real white trash is in a person’s heart. I do feel like many people use the phrase to refer to poor white people though.
It is just classism and the timeless urban against rural conflict. A person who becomes one or the other gets the convert’s zeal. There will be people justifying this saying they have problematic attitudes and behaviors but I don’t put much faith in this because often the person doing the criticism have all sorts of unexamined beliefs themselves.
If someone is born into better circumstances and never question their own attitudes and behaviors they can’t be expected to have necessary perspective to evaluate the beliefs of others in more unfortunate circumstances in good faith. This of course doesn’t mean social circumstances and people in that situation cannot be examined or criticized rather it has to come with self-awareness.
timeless urban against rural conflict.
I was born on the rural side of this conflict but defected to the enemy
As other poster have said the idea came about hundreds of years ago. It is part of a eugenics classiest idea that the upper class of society is of good breeding and the lower class is of bad breeding. Believes such as disease being created by the lower class where part of this. If you read old works like Lovecraft you will see base white trash referenced as a sort of devolved and lesser white person. White trash is the non confirming portion of the poor lower class that society was attempting to dispose of. Another poster referenced the book white trash which is about some of the history of class in early America.
