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.
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.