White trash

White trash is an American ethnic slur with a social class component. It is comparable to "honkey" in that it is targeted toward white people, but also carries an allegation of low social status. 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, and the phrase is generally considered somewhat offensive. 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" often carries associations with poverty, but not always.

"White trash" are perceived as having crude manners, abnormally low moral standards, and lack of cultured behavior and/or education. 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.

A related stereotype is that of the redneck, though they differ in nuance. 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). "White trash" is more pejorative, and geographically not quite the same. So-called rednecks tend to be exclusively rural, whereas "white trash" are more likely to live in semideveloped or suburban areas.

Details

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 popular culture. 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.

Following is a partial list of stereotypes associated with the "white trash":

• Poor hygiene.
• Poorly kept property, along with prominent display of non-functional bathroom appliances or automobiles.
• Ignorance and general lack of education or an unwillingness to upgrade one's education.
• A complete lack of interest in style, fashion, and in appearing presentable.
• Clannish, particularly evidenced by racist attitudes.
• Laziness and lack of ambition.
• Unstable families.
• Sexual promiscuity, teen pregnancy, illegitimate children, and incest.
• Self-centeredness.
• A willingness to partake in casual violence, often in the form of a "Friday night brawl".
• Poor diet, poor health or obesity.
• Crooked, discolored, or missing teeth.
• Unruly behavior in public, including drunkenness, swearing and brawling.
• Poverty - particularly dwelling in trailers, or mobile homes (whence comes the term "trailer trash").
• Residing in rural or small-town environments.
• Speaking with a drawl or an accent.
• Ownership of dogs, such as pit bulls or rottweilers, that are overly aggressive due to being poorly raised (or, often, raised as fight dogs) and ineptly bred.
• Musical tastes limited to country and western and heavy metal.
• Wearing the mullet hairstyle.
• Wearing a type of undershirt called a wifebeater (males).
• Driving an older model domestic pickup truck like an El Camino or sports coupe like the Camaro or a rusty domestic sedan.
• Having jobs that consist of some type of physical or menial labor.
• Keeping a non-functioning automobile elevated on cement blocks in the front yard or elsewhere on the premises or a prediliction to own more vehicles, often in poor condition, than members of one's household.
• Being unable to complete tasks which have been assigned just a short period beforehand.
• Being unable to accomplish tasks in an orderly and productive manner.

These stereotypes are very similar, if not identical to, racist stereotypes, and the idea of the inherent inferiority of poor white people shares a common intellectual history with the idea of the inherent inferiority of non-white people.

Some people argue that "white trash" is racist, not because it includes the word "white," but because it implies that trashiness is the normal state for non-white people and thus when a white person is trashy it must be specified that the person is white.

A stereotypical view of activities that most associate with white trash are:

• Excessive television viewing, especially of televised wrestling and NASCAR
• Shopping at Wal-Mart
• Attendance at tractor pulls
• Excessive tobacco use (including dip, snuff and chew)
• Excessive alcohol consumption, especially cheap domestic beer
• An interest in demolition derbies or Monster truck rallies
• Participation in bowling, darts, billiards or other sports during which alcohol is consumed by competitors as well as spectators.
• Viewership of, and appearance on, television shows like The Jerry Springer Show
• This term is commonly used by students of Valparaiso High School to describe students of Portage High School.

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" (Newitz 1996, 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-consious 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).

White trash in fiction and film

• White Trash The Movie A Comedy film set in the hamlet of Ludgershall follows the daily life of 6 teenagers and how they go about dealing with life. The film broke boundaries becoming one of the first feature films to be legally uploaded to the Internet with the 90-minute film available to anyone to download.
• 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.
• Many of the characters in the films of Russ Meyer and John Waters are examples of "white trash" stereotypes, exaggerated for camp value.
• 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.
• Married... with Children was a popular late '80s and early '90s TV sitcom about a lower-middle class family outside of Chicago, arguably "white trash".
• In Harper Lee's 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the Ewell family are referred to as "white trash."
• White Trash was an American metal group.
• Beavis and Butt-Head, a high-rating MTV animated television program that first aired in the mid 1990's and is still aired internationally, chronicles the life and events of two adolescent underachievers portrayed to be of below-average intelligence. The two characters are meant to portray two white trash metalheads living without parental supervision in a middle class, suburban community.
• 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.
• The music performer Kid Rock exhibits the look and mannerisms of a working-class male.
• A recurring sketch on the sketch comedy/variety tv show Saturday Night Live called "Appalachian Emergency Room", which began in 2004, depicts an eponymous hospital emergency room where various misfit-like characters check in for injuries stemming from stereotypical "white trash" activities. [1]
• In the Comedy Central series South Park, Kenny McCormick's family is portrayed as the stereotypical American "white trash".
• In the film "Million Dollar Baby", directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, the family background of Maggie (played by Hilary Swank) fits most of the above characteristics pertaining to the definition of "white trash".
• Kalifornia, a 1993 film about the mass-murderer Earl Grace, starrs Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis as two characters who could be described as "white trash".
• Boys Don't Cry, from 1999 depicts a tragedy of love, rape and murder in a stereotypical "white trash" community in Nebraska.
• Gummo (1997), a film depicting a range of different townspeople of Xenia, Ohio who exhibited different stereotypes associated with white trash.
• 8 Mile (2003) is about a white man (based upon the life of Eminem, who also played the lead role) living in a trailer park in Detroit trying to pursue a rap career.
• Sideways (2004) depicts an overweight waitress Cammi who has a one-night stand with Jack a main character. Later on she has make-up sex with her husband in their garbage strewn house within a matter of hours after getting caught.

Similar terms

• Cracker
• Hick
• Hillbilly
• Bubba
• Pea-pickers
• Stained Glass Pub Patrons
• Peckerwood
• Redneck
• Trailer trash
• Wigger
• Yokel
• Poor White
• Honkey
• Hoosier (especially in the St. Louis area)

See also

• Bogan
• Chav
• Feral (subculture)
• Mullet
• Ned (Scottish)
• Scanger
• Yobbo

Sources

• Berger, Maurice (2000). White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness. ISBN 0374527156.
• Newitz, Annalee (1996). White Trash: Race and Class in America. ISBN 0415916925.

Further reading

• Goad, Jim (1998). The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies Hicks and White Trash Became Americas Scapegoats. ISBN 0684838648.
• 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 0898151899
• 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 1592130216