White trash
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White trash (extended: poor white trash) is a racial epithet usually used to describe certain low income caucasians, especially those characterized by crude manners or abnormally low moral standards. According to Oxford English Dictionary, "white trash" first came into common use in the 1830s as an American pejorative used by the slaves of "gentlemen" (rich white Southerners, often plantation aristocrats) against poor Caucasians who worked in the field. The term involves both behavioral characteristics (such as mannerisms, lifestyle) and overt racial characteristics (whiteness). The term is probably used most frequently in the Southeast region of the United States.
The nature of the term "white trash", the people to whom it has been applied, and the motivation of people applying the term are studied in connection to racism and politics. In full historical context, the term is difficult to define, and any definition must be considered with respect to the context in which the epithet was applied. For example, the racial meaning of "white" has changed; 150 years ago immigrants from Mediterranean Europe would not have been considered "white." At present, the U.S. census would consider these same people, such as Italians and Italian Americans to be "white."
Some people argue that "white trash" is a racist term not because it includes the word "white", but it implies that trashiness is the normal state for black people and thus when a white person is trashy it must be specified that the person is white. Along these lines, "white trash" people are sometimes referred to as "white niggers", or "wiggers".
It has been debated why there is no comparable term commonly used for other races, such as black trash or Latino trash. The suggestion is that it is a form of "reverse racism." In particular, the acceptance of the term white trash in everyday media is questioned when offensive words referring to another race, such as nigger, are shunned.
Today, The Jerry Springer Show is an example often used to define white trash. This television show often deals with lower-class white people and situations that are generally considered to be common to the white trash stereotype (e.g. incest, illegitimate children, racist beliefs). The mostly-white audience of this show is also considered by some people to consist of white trash.
White trash in fiction and film
- 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.
- Tobacco Road (1932) by Erskine Caldwell, set in Georgia during the worst years of the Great Depression, depicts a family of poor white tenant farmers estranged by the industrialization of production and the migration into cities.
- Ellen, the young heroine of Kaye Gibbons's 1987 novel Ellen Foster, comes from a white trash background.
- In her novel By the Shores of Gitchee Gumee (1996), Tama Janowitz portrays a white trash family living in a trailer park.
- Some of Mike Leigh's film characters are also magnificent examples of white trash people. This is the case in films such as Secrets & Lies, Naked and All or Nothing.