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White trash

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White Trash is an American ethnic slur with a social class component. It is term usually interchangeable with trailer trash. It is comparable to "honky" in that it is targeted toward white people, but also carries an allegation of low social status and poor prospects (downward mobility). To call someone "white trash" is to accuse that person of being bankrupt of cultural endowment. "White trash" is not a demographic group recognized by sociology.

Attitudes toward the phrase have softened somewhat in recent years, to the degree that some people describe themselves as "white trash", and there is a genre of rock music known proudly as "white-trash rock", but the phrase is still never found in polite contexts. "White trash" is usually associated with poverty, though sheer eccentricity can play a role.

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[edit] Origins and contexts

The orgins 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 someone as socially worthless. It is often used by lower class white people to stigmatize others within their class who are perceived to be more backward than the norm for their class. "White trash" are perceived as having crude manners, abnormally low moral standards, and lack of cultured behavior and/or education. Swearing, smoking, promiscuity, drunkenness, overly loud and animated behavior in public, and gambling (especially the copious purchase of scratch-style lottery tickets) are examples of "white trash" vices. The label might be applied to a household that, for example, lives in a decrepit apartment or trailer, has a large family, lacks indoor plumbing, and has a yard strewn with debris or perhaps a non-functioning vehicle.

This group is "America's poorest and most disparaged and despised category of whiteness" (Berger 2000, p. 284). By the Fussell categorization of social class, most of these people would rank in the low and middle "prole" class. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "white trash" first came into common use in the 1830s as a pejorative used by the slaves of upper-class Southerners, often plantation aristocrats, against poor whites, below even the status of yeomen, who worked in the fields; at the time, 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 (whiteness). The term is widely used across the United States, not only in the South, Appalachia, and Midwest, but also in East and West Coast cities like New York and Los Angeles, as a shorthand to deride others. On the West Coast, however, the term is often used colloquially in its abbreviated form: PWT (Poor White Trash).

[edit] Discussion

Some commentators argue that the use of the term is provoked by the "confusion of racial identities and stereotypes," and that some white people may use it as a result of a stereotypical comparison with non-white people. However, according to Annalee Newitz, it is "not simply that white 'renters' or 'trash' are acting black. Rather, by behaving in a manner considered indecorous...these...(white trash) are disrupting implicit understandings of what it means to be white." The term "designates ruptures of conventions that maintain whiteness as an unmarked, normative identity" and is used "in racialized contexts where class and race differences become conflated, overlapping rather than remaining clear and distinct." The term "materializes a complicated policing of the inchoate boundaries that comprise class and racial identities in this country" (Wray and Newitz 1997, p.46, 47).

However, since the term is the only "white identity which does not view itself as the norm from which all other races and ethnicities deviate" and "because white trash is, for whites, the most visible and clearly marked form of whiteness," this confusion may "perhaps help to make all whites self-conscious of themselves as a racial and classed group, to bring...us one step closer to a world without racial division, or, at the very least, a world where racial difference does not mean racial, symbolic, and economic domination" (ibid, introduction).

A related stereotype is that of the redneck, though 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 schtick), but could be genuinely offended if called "white trash." "Trash" is more pejorative, and geographically different.

[edit] White trash in the arts

Literature

Music

Food

Film

TV programs

  • Roseanne was a popular U.S. sitcom about a working class, Midwestern family in the late 1980s and early 1990s, in which the characters often billed themselves as white trash. In one episode, Dan was arrested, and, when he returned home from jail, Roseanne said that the family was now officially poor white trash and began to dance.
  • Trailer Park Boys is a highly rated Canadian television program produced by Showcase that features young adult males living in a fictional trailer park. It is a popular example used when referring to "white trash" culture.
  • Some consider The Simpsons to be a white trash family, though others argue that they seem too economically well-off to be considered white trash. In one episode Bart Simpson was referred to as "Yellow Trash."
  • Kenny McCormick from the adult animated series South Park comes from a characteristically white trash background.
  • Chester McBadbat in the cartoon series The Fairly OddParents exemplifies the white trash stereotype.
  • Al Bundy and his family from the long-running Fox Television sitcom Married with Children have often been described as displaying certain White Trash traits.

Radio

[edit] Other terms

[edit] See also

[edit] Sources

  • Berger, Maurice (2000). White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness. ISBN 0-374-52715-6.
  • Wray, Matt and Annalee Newitz, eds. (1997). White Trash: Race and Class in America. ISBN 0-415-91692-5.

[edit] Further reading

  • 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
  • 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 1-59213-021-6de:White trash

es:White trash fr:White trash it:White trash ja:プアホワイト sv:White trash

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