Kim Pearson

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The term White Trash is slang and is also used as a disparaging term for a white person or white people perceived as being lazy and ignorant.

1831--This term functions as a noun singular but plural in construction

1819--This term is often offensive and relates to a member of an inferior or underprivileged white social group.

1850-55 -- America – White Trash is slang for disparaging and offensive remarks to members of the class of poor whites, especially in the southern U.S.A. or poor whites collectively and contemptuously, to white people in general. This term coined by black speakers in the mid-19^th century to refer to their neighbors, either pejoratively or ruefully and, it was also used by whites into the late 20^th century. Another thing is it is often used with connotations of degeneracy and unpleasantness.

White Trash is the term used for the decadent rich or sophisticated individuals, the jet set or their imitations. The phrase has been intended to refer contemptuously to cosmopolitan socialites (often in the phrase ‘International White Trash’). Australians were also called white trash.

"Euro trash is a derivative:

She came from South Los Angeles, near Watts, every day and her parents had saved all their lives to buy her in among this rich white trash’.

Julie Burchill, The Face magazine, March 1984."

Quote taken from the Dictionary of Contemporary Slang

 

"1856-- Olmsted Texas [Bartlett]. In social relations, the Negroes are sensitive to the overbearing propensities of a proprietary who are accustomed to regard all white neighbors out of their own class as white trash.

1856--Stowe, of all the prizen critters that I know on, these ere mean white trash is the prizenest. They ain’t got no manners and no bringing up. Ibid., 1. 276, ‘The fact is,’ said Mr. Gordon, what with niggers, and overseers, and white trash, my chances of salvation are dreadfully limited.’

1866--Atlantic, xviii, 84. Tain’t no use honey; you don’t pear to take no int’res’ in yer own kith and kin, no more dan or’nary white trash."

Above quotes taken from the Oxford Dictionary of Slang.

White Trash in an informal sense a pejorative term often used to describe relatively uneducated white Americans with bad personal habits in a typically low socio-economic class. The term is often directed at those who are not necessarily happy with their economic status, but do not attempt to better themselves through education or hard work. The term implies a lack of education and social refinement, and some people might argue that the term belongs to a category of insults focusing on behavioral characteristics (e.g., mannerisms, lifestyle) rather than overt racial characteristics (e.g., nigger, kike, etc.).

Here is an example of who could be considered white trash:

1. A person who chains the hound in the front yard instead of the back yard.
2. A person who works on their vehicle in the front yard instead of a garage.
3. A person who burns the trash (or not) in the front yard instead of taking it to a dump.
4. A person who chews gum for cracking purposes only (noisy and quite disturbing).

Note that these are slanted and stereotypical criteria, they are only meant as examples not uncommon to people that could be referred to as white trash by others in their own communities.

White Trash in the American popular media are stereotyped as uneducated, lazy, vulgar, and showing little respect for authority or social norms. White Trash is often, though not always, seen as politically conservative.

Males are perceived to be white trash if interested in stereotypically "manly or macho" things, such as sports, tattoos, body piercing (late 1990’s) especially hunting and motor sports, guns, tobacco smoked and chewed, alcohol, mostly beer and sex. They tend to avoid anything that could be considered girlish or feminine, such as fine art, ballet, or even fine food.

Females are perceived to be White trash is unrefined, tattoos, body piercing (late 1990’s), either very submissive or aggressive in their social behavior.

During the 1980’s and 1990’s, many television sitcoms were developed featuring white trash families or characters. Some of these included:

1. The Simpsons
2. Married with Children
3. Karla and Woody from Cheers
4. Roseanne, Grace Under Fire
5. Unhappily Ever After
6. King of the Hill
7. Grounded for Life
8. Especially Mimi from "The Drew Carey Show"

As an epithet, white trash, or the more extended poor white trash first came into common use in the 1830’s. The Oxford English Dictionary identifies white trash in its earliest usage as an American pejorative used by the slaves of gentlemen against poor whites who worked in the field. The real distinction is that while a black man might be slave, to be a house slave was better than any menial job, even if that job was held by a white person.

The nature of the term white trash is studied in connection to racism and politics to the people to whom it has been applied. The definition above is colloquial in the sense of how the term is used in contemporary American English. In full historical context, the term is much more difficult to define, and any definition must be considered with respect to the context in which the period it 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".

White trash in the computer world it is a pejorative term for Intel-based microcomputers, used by NeXT users at UK law firm Linklaters & Paines to contrast these machines with their black NeXT boxes. (1996-09-04)

Related terms include: Trailer park trash, Redneck, Hick and Hillbilly.

Related material may be found in racism and mullet

This term had enormous popularity during the 19^th and 20^th century because of the much narrower definition of "whiteness". During the beginning years of the Republic, a white person could more correctly be defined as a white land holder, usually of Anglo-Saxon heritage and always protestant. Over the years this ethnic and social identifier was referred to as WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). It was not always factual in practice but, the identifier was true in stereotype. Because of this narrow definition of what it was to be white, the large majority of the country was in some sense considered non-white.

"Non-whites as a class exploded along with immigration, and a formalized interest in studying immigrant poverty as a genetic disease that could be approached in terms akin to animal husbandry was preferred by the "white" upper class. Manner of non-whiteness were categorized and systematized into the flourishing field of eugenics. Much of this research was focused in the early study of criminal science, or forensics." wikipedia.com

Ethnographic research, especially with regards to the physical traits of an ethnic group, became closely tied to the study of the immigrant crime problem. And so the early biometrics of forensics were used to describe the form and appearance of the criminal animal. Cranial measurements, fingerprints, height and weight and skin color all became associated in huge indexed arrays to these names of the non-whites: Irishman, Pole, German, Jew, and Negro. Mug shots are a living remnant of this obsession with cataloguing as it peaked in the Victorian era.

The science of ethnography came into the language. On one hand, a science of stereotypes was evolving throughout the nineteenth century, and on the other a culture of categorization was proliferating amongst the competing groups. Colloquial insults took on national and archetypal significance.

White trash was a unique case within this larger culture of systemic racism. Everyone was non-white by virtue of the fact that they were poor, because by definition to be white was to be economically, socially and biologically superior. It came into especially strong favor during the years of the American Reconstruction shortly following the American Civil War. During these years a great deal of political effort was behind the idea of land redistribution, because it was theorized by northern law makers that the power of the southern aristocracy lay primarily in their control of the land. President Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat, strongly opposed these changes, and the "carpetbaggers" who came down from the north to implement Congress’ redistribution plan. It was at this time that the classic division between poor whites and poor blacks was exploited by land owners.

And white trash then became the broad popular lexicon. It became a group identity used widely in discussing race politics for the next 150 years. Within this structure there were Whites, Blacks, White Trash and other non-whites. Over the years it became a concern of choosing sides. Many immigrant groups who had originally been identified as non-white before the Civil War (the Irish are a prime example), quickly began to assimilate in the face of the growing post-war Anti-Black focus. As the ranks of the rich white upper class grew with addition of successful minority "white" groups, so too the ranks of those "whites" who still hadn't succeeded.

It is difficult to define what "white trash" basically means. It is not the definition that is central, but all of the ill-definable jibber jabber which surrounds that "canonical definition" that become important. The context is always growing within the culture.

But cultural definitions are not static. And so, at the moment, it is thought that white trash means something like this:

In the beginning, White Trash was a low-born base-minded rustic; a man of ignoble ideas or instincts; in later use, an unprincipled or depraved scoundrel; a man naturally disposed to base or criminal actions, or deeply involved in the commission of disgraceful crimes. But in fact, that definition had already been set down in the 1300's for another, much earlier word which is not often considered:

1. Villain 1. This term villain was originally, a low-born base-minded rustic; a man of ignoble ideas or instincts; in later use, an unprincipled or depraved scoundrel; a man naturally disposed to base or criminal actions, or deeply involved in the commission of disgraceful crimes.
2. At the outset Villain meant a villager. A citizen of a small town. Nigger literally is a variation on Negro. All it means, literally, is that something is black. White trash, like kike or polack or greaseball, is essentially an empty phrase. As reclamationists have noted, we can fill those cultural words with any content that we want. The definitions have no empirical basis, they have no foundation in the repeatable scientific world of fact. They are instead short-lived, and become more a portrait of a person's heart, and of the culture that they live in.

Anther word that can be used for White Trash is Hillbilly. This term originally came as a pejorative term for people who lived in isolation in the Appalachian Mountains of North America. If one wanted to be less demeaning they would use the term would be "hill folk". The use of this definition was probably correct between the western expansions and the 1940’s. The arrival of the interstate highway system and television brought Appalachian communities into mainstream US culture in the 1950’s, 1960’s, but many communities with relatively traditional lifestyles remain throughout the region.

The hillbilly lifestyle was gently reflected in the 1960’s American sitcom the Beverley Hillbillies.

Today, the term hillbilly means an individual characterized by being generally unrefined.

1. Random House Dictionary Of The English Language, Sec. Ed. , Random House 1987
2. The Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, Tony Thorn, Pantheon Books, NY 1990.
3. Oxford Dictionary of Slang, Oxford University Press, John Ayto, 1998.
4. Slang and Its Analogues, J.S. Farmer and W.E. Henley, Krause Reprint Corporation, NY 1965
5. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, Tenth Edition, Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
6. http://www.folkdoc.doc
7. http://www.wikipedia.com