Wikipedia: White trash/Old Talk

Difference (from prior major revision) (minor diff, author diff)

Added: 18a19,20

:IMO, Larry is dead on here, speaking as a native of Tennessee.

Changed: 149,232c151

First: Karla can't be white trash. She's Italian.

Be that as it may, it's strange to even have this debate because it is a moving target discussion. Karla is a TV image of an urban minority: an Italian American. She is confused now with a white, rural poor person. It's interesting why this is. A "white trash chick" is loud, uncouth, liberal with her discussion of sexuality and bodily facts, uninterested in pretension and generally disgusted by the "hoity toity" pose put on by a "proper lady". That essentialy describes Karla perfectly. Except for one thing.

Karla is Italian.

This is important. The character she represents is more akin to something out of a mob movie. She's a lower class urban minority. For all intents and purposes, she's NOT white. Explicitly so. We may not see it that way because TV has taken stereotypes and sort of smeered them around and watered them down into cultural images as bland as bologna. But the image of the inner city Italian "greaseball" (which Karla is best classified as) comes out of the attitudes of a nineteenth century America where to be white was still a very discriminating idea. White meant you were a WASP. More pointedly, white meant you were a Mayflower upper class east coaster with a very specific lineage and income level. Italians were not white. Poles were not white. Swedes, my god SWEDES, were not white (I'm Swedish and my folk come from the mines of Northern Michigan and I can tell you with some authority that even those seemingly ideal Aryan supermen the Scandanaivian were essentially just above black in this country 100 years ago.) Almost no one 100 years ago was WHITE. Pure, clean, as clear and lovely as snow. The Irish weren't (Black Comb, anyone?). The Greeks still aren't (swarthy folk, they might say). Even WHITE people weren't white.

And that is where White Trash come from. White trash are a unique type of non-white citizen. Essentially, there were the Mayflower Whites that dominated the top 10 percent of the country. (and, secretly of course, they weren't pure either... that's the problem with purity). They had their garden parties and their plantations and their new style high rises and their tracts of tenements owned all over the cities and their fleets of boats. And they employed, or oppressed, or enslaved (one way or another... whether through chattel slaver or indentured servitude) everyone else:

Africans. Indians. Irishmen. Welshmen. Poles. Italians. Swedes. Norwegians. Finns. Greeks. Germans.

But, occassionally, weirdly, there would be some small group of non-whites that WERE white. And that was puzzling to the Mayflower folk. Every once in a while there was a sharecropper scraping by that wasn't irish, or welsh, or free black, or scotch or even german. There would occassionally be a nice Smith working in the mines. Or a Cox with family living back in Kent would come along and ask to plow a field off in some corner of the plantation for a share of the profits and the some food to live on.

Essentially the Mayflower people would be presented with someone else who was an Anglo-Saxon protestant, but miraculously, strangely, that person or family would not be wealthy and successful and lord of all they surveyed. This was DEEPLY troubling to the white Mayflower Plantation owners. Especially troubling when it came up in the Reconstruction South. It meant, pointedly, that WHITE people could fall on hard times. It meant that WHITE people could lose their way and fall out of favor with GOD. It meant that poverty was not a disease of the skin. It meant that Tracing your mother's mother's mother's mother back to the Adams family of London did not necessarily guarantee that your children would be priveleged and powerful and justly rule over the lesser races who neede their help so desperately.

One look inside of the homes of these "fallen whites" revealed that Catholicism alone did not cause population explosions. It revealed that africans were not the only people who struggled with violence. And it made things absolutely clear that the Sioux were not the only people with a drinking problem. Not immediately, but surreptiously, it began to occur to WASP upper class people that you might not be able to predict criminal behavior by the length of a man's nose or the thickness of his curls.

And that was damn scarry. So, they decided (like the completely illogical idiots that nineteenth century upper class people tended to be) that rather than face the possibility that WHITE people were like everyone else and susceptible to all of the same foibles and problems, and therefore did not have the right to fullfill their manifest destiny regardless of how many "injuns" and "niggers" died along the way to "that alabaster city on the hill"... rather than come to that simple conclusion, they invented a term.

White Trash.

Sure these people were "white". Sure they "seemed" to be like the WASPS who ran the corporations and managed the engine of government, but clearly they were not like those people in fact. They were close to white. They were similar in aspect and manner to the white leaders and pillars of the community. But they were not white. And so they became known as White Trash.

Ironically, of course, this is a term that isn't often used at the time by the Upper Class. Black people as early as the 1830s are identified as using it as a disparaging remark:

"1836 J. K. Paulding Slavery in U.S. 205 The slave of a gentleman universally considers himself a superior being to `poor white folks'."

And this, more than anything, has been how the term evolved. It was very convenient during Reconstruction (both emotionally and economically) if the newly freed blacks and the always impoverished "poor whites" just fought amongst themselves for the scraps. If Blacks could see the "trash" as being "uppity" and trying to reach higher then their place, they would easily be convinced of the need for squabling. And more importantly, if the newly freed slaves could be identified as the source of the poor white man's lack of money (rather than an extremely unfair distribution of land and resources that invariably benefitted the WASP landowners) then maybe the poor white man would spend all of his time fighting negroes and not worrying about the master up on the hill.

Name calling and setting the poor against each other.

White trash people are uncouth, uncivilized, over-sexed and violent. Wife beaters one and all. They'll hunt you down and eat you alive if given half a chance (DELIVERANCE, Anyone?) They would be really dangerous, too, if they weren't always whoring and getting drunk and generally decaying into an idiotic stupor right before our eyes. At best they are comic relief. At worst they might string you up on a tree and hang you dead.

Boy, they sound like niggers, don't they? Or Kikes? Or Pollocks? Or Greaseballs? Or peasant "villains"

"Villain
1. 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:

* 1303 R. Brunne Handl. Synne 11557 Goddys treytour, and ryt vyleyn! Hast fiou no mynde of Marye Maudeleyn;
* 1320-30 Horn Ch. (Ritson) 857 The begger answered in that tide, Vilaine, cunestow nought ride?
* C. 1380 Sir Ferumb. 5471 flanne he cryde and gan to sayn: `Whar art fiow, Charlis, fiow vylayn?'
* 1501 Douglas Pal. Hon. i. lvii, Ane me fand, quhilk said, and greit disdeneit, `Auant veillane, thow reclus imperfite'.
* C. 1590 Marlowe Faustus vi, Villaine haue I not bound thee to tel me any thing?
* 1596 Shaks. Tam. Shr. i. ii. 20 Now knocke when I bid you: sirrah villaine.
* 1622 Massinger & Dekker Virg. Martyr iv. iii, Theoph. It matters not, We can discharge this work without his help... Sap. Villain!
* 1663 Cowley Cutter Coleman St. v. xii, Villain, Rebel, Traitor, out o' my sight.
* 1821 Scott Kenilw. xli, Drunken villain,..thy idleness and debauched folly will stretch a halter ere it be long."

So, why is Karla imagined to be White Trash?

The reasons are as old, at least, as 1303. Whoever sits on the throne wants to believe that they BELONG there. And they want to STAY there. So for emotional as well as practical reasons its easy to assign to your enemy all of those things people universally agree are bad. Alcoholism, illtempered manners, sexual deviance (whatever that might be) and generally ugliness. Big noses, big lips, crooked teeth... monsters one and all. Out casts. Roamers along the misty moors like Grendel or the Cyclops... uncivilized brutes who are partly driven to their crimes by their deformities and the outcast status that those deformities earn them.

Quasimodo, one and all.

In the first, names like White Trash serve to ease the worries of the upper class by making that thing, however similar it may apart, distintcly apart. Even when there seems to be NO difference, that appendage of "trash" creates a sullied, vaguely spoiled sense... it almost sounds diseased.

And in the second, those names create an easy scaffolding for intra-class conflict. A Swede hates no man more than he hates a Finn. Except maybe for a Norwegian. And if a black man wanders into Crystal Falls, Michigan, well for that occassion all of the Scandanavians will join forces to run him out of town. And if a jew shows up? Who knows who join forces with whom. But rest assured, no one will wonder why Nike doesn't manufacture their shoes in the USA. They'll be too busy hating each other.

Because everyone knows that X is loud and uncouth and drunk all of the time and stupid. And they'll steal your women and your jobs and rob you blind when you aren't looking.

Villains, one and all.

--Trimalchio

That turned into a rant. But I hope it was a useful one.

Now, why people LIKE to be known as White Trash is one I am not sure I understand entirely. Like black people who call each other "nigger" or when I heard my Grandfather refer to his brother as "that old Swede--dumb as they come" with a smile... an interesting inversion of the tools "the man" uses to keep you down? Like GEEKS who revel in their childhood appelation, I suppose. Rednecks love being rednecks these days. And Queers absolutely own their own name now. Jews tell the funniest Kike jokes, I have found, and even Poles have gotten into the act in my experience. What does it all mean? I fear that no answer would be sufficient.

The gay lobby calls that "reclaiming" the language, and I heartily approve. It amounts to disarming the enemy without touching him, by turning his mental sword into your mental pillow. When anyone asks what I do, I always say "I'm a computer geek". I like wearing bow ties, though I do think pocket protectors are ugly. An amusing aside--I was once asked that question by a stripper, who responded to my answer by saying "why would you want to call yourself a geek"? At the time, she was wearing a black leather collar with "slut" spelled in rhinestones. --LDC

Something that has always bothered me about the expression white trash, is that there isn't equivalents for black or other people,
so, it feels like telling that these particular whites are trash,
but all blacks and others are too....is it just my impression?
:: This is precisely the point. Everyone who isn't A White Rich Anglo Saxon Protestant (WRASP?) is trash. Period. White Trash are sort of a special case of this general truth. They are White Anglo Saxon Protestants, who are somehow, mysteriously, not Rich. There so close to being perfect, but in a way that makes them the farthest there can be. It's a puzzling place to be, socially. You can't fit in with other whites, because you are Poor. You can't fit in with other poor people because you are White. Blacks can have solidarity with Hispanics or Native Americans... to be non-white is so powerful that it can transcend other differences (not always, but often). But to be White AND Poor is in some ways its own kind of terrible. It's a classic double bind. As a class they were, typically, completely outside of the institutions of Slavery. Racism itself was thrust upon them by circumstance. Certainly they, as a group, did themselves no honor by how they dealt (and continue to deal) with the situation from the KKK to White Power to Militia Movements, but the extreme anomie of their group identity... the fact that in some ways we want to deny them the kind of group identity that just about every other oppressed minority can enjoy to one degree or another... well, I have a kind of horrified sympathy for the group. I mean, my Mom is old time West Virginia mountain folk. She's white trash. I grew up with my share of rural Michigander Trash. I know people in the Michigan Militia. I have read the Turner Diaries (which, I think sometimes, is the poor white version... or inversion rather... of knowing "why the caged bird sings"). So, yeah, I agree that White Trash is like a special kind of poor. I suppose from the point of view of a lot of other minorities (and this has been true for at least two hundred years) it can seem to be a sort of "boo hoo, poor little rich girl" sort of group identity. When a jewish friend of mine and I talk, it frequently boils down to the issue you point out:
:::I say I am white trash. And he says "Yeah, but you still get to be white." And yeah, no one ever made lampshades out of my ancestors. And no one ever kidnapped my ancestors and chained them up and stacked them like chord wood in the bottom of leaky old boats. And no one ever handed out small pox blankets to my ancestors. But is it really valuable to anyone to start lining up our cultural scars for comparison? White trash is a special kind of trash. It's the kind of trash that even the other trash won't talk to.
::And the other thing is that all of this stuff is all already ancient history. We still hate people and we still have racism and we still have code words, but these codewords that we are talking about have lost their meaning. I can write these things because they are ancient history. "White Trash" isn't entirely dead, just like "Nigger" isn't entirely dead. But they are coals that are cooling quickly. I mean, I'm poor white trash on one side, and old Swede miner on the other... but I teach in the academy at the University of Michigan. And I teach african american students right next to Arab American students right next to rich white girls from Bloomfield Hills, right next to more "white trash" from my old hometown. I don't know what this new world is, but it isn't the old time stratfied class world that Marx described or EV Debs fought against. And maybe it never really was, entirely. Carnegie was a Poor Scot. And Henry Ford was as white trash as they get. Hitler wasn't even German, and Malcolm X had white blood in his veins. J Edgar Hoover was gay and Thomas Jefferon loved a slave girl as much as a man of his time could. Were things ever the way they seemed to be? And how are they now?

Just to clarify, I think why I am writing all of this stuff is to raise a question (a long winded question perhaps) about what the actual entry SHOULD say. Do we write an entry about Black People that talks about eating Fried Chicken and gang banging? I feel like the white trash entry that is there now is just that narrow minded. But I also recognize that it was written, probably, by someone who identifies with the stereotype and is, in someways, reclaiming the name--In a Jeff Foxworthy sort of way anyway. And I am trying to present an historical context because I really don't know what the entry SHOULD look like but something tells me it shouldn't look like what it looks like at the moment.-- Confused Trimalchio

I agree, Trimalchio. That was part of the point of my original comment. Basically, I think the entry needs to be rewritten by someone who is more sensitive to all the subtexts that have been discussed above. :-) --LMS

Subsequent discussion moved to racism/racial and ethnic slurs

I think this page represents an interesting phenomenon--not the phenomenon of so-called "white trash," but the phenomenon of what Wikipedians feel emboldened to write about. On the one hand, for all I know, the notion of "white trash" is actually studied by sociologists and cultural anthropologists (yep--[1] and [2], for example--look at his dissertation topic). So, books have been written about it. People have sweated over dissertations about it. Anyway, I am just guessing that Matt Stoker wrote about the topic simply because he is a very active, intelligent member of American society, in which the notion of "white trash" is sometimes bandied about. In writing about it, he has simply codified what an active, intelligent member of the society can explain and infer about the concept. I just think this is interesting, in that it illustrates just the sort of phenomenon that makes the notion of "white trash" interesting from an anthropological point of view in the first place.

I will leave it up to those who know more about the topic to pass judgment whether the current article is unbiased or not. --LMS

: Actually, I saw an uncreated link to "White trash" on the Married with Children page and thought, "What the heck, why don't I get the ball rolling?" Besides, I needed a break from writing about things I really know something about, such as Phases of matter, Gibbs phase rule and the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution. BTW, prior to writing the initial entry I did take a look at [3], but most of the thoughts are my own, so if there are any sociologists out there, please make corrections as needed. --Matt Stoker

From the outside looking in (I'm Australian, have only visited the states briefly), your definition seems overly broad - I considered that the term usually implied people who were living in very poor conditions with unstable homes, violent relationships, alcoholism and drug use, long-term unemployment, and so on. The Simpson family - to take a fictional example - while certainly not wealthy have a husband with a steady and respectable job (safety technician at a nuclear power station), a stable, loving, and equal relationship, attend church regularly, and while Homer drinks to excess on occasion it does not overly damage his relationships or job performance (such as it is :), and yet you are placing his family as "white trash". -- Robert Merkel

: Actually, in the episode with Reverend Lovejoy's daughter Jessica, she refers to Bart as "yellow trash". It is common for the Simpsons to make reference to peculiarities of animation such as four fingers; this was obviously meant to imply "white trash" in a medium where white folks happen to be yellow. --LDC

I don't think "white trash" implies such a state of abject poverty, just that they are poor and not upwardly mobile. Admittedly, the Simpsons would be near the upper limit for "white trash", but I still think they qualify. I hope others will join in and state their opinions on the matter. Are the Simpsons white trash? If not, do any other characters in the mentioned television shows qualify? For the record, I included the Drew Carey show because Mimi frequently refers to herself as "Trailer park trash". -- Matt Stoker

"White trash" to me has always implied both poverty and squalor, but that does not mean it's necessarily correct. We should probably be careful about drawing inferrences from fiction; perhaps the screewriters and / or the actress playing Mimi also have a poor understanding of what "white trash" is, according to sociologists. --KQ

What's of interest to anthropologists is not just the life of people who are sometimes insulted with the epithet "white trash" but the very phenomenon of people using the epithet. That's probably as important and interesting as anything you might mention about the lives of poor rural white folks. --LMS

: IMO, Larry is dead on here, speaking as a native of Tennessee.

Fair enough.

The tone of the article suggests that the writer does not count any of these ``white trash'' people as personal friends. A far more simple definition of white trash would be someone who believes that dismantling automobiles, and leaving dismantled automobiles (possibly for decades), in one's front yard, ain't nobodies business.

But this coming from someone who understands the value of a trailer in the ozarks vis-a-vis a loft in downtown San Fran.

Growing up I had plenty of friends in the lower economic classes (at least if you count 8+ kids in a single wide trailer or our neighbors who used to feed us Twinkies and Ding-Dongs, which they got out of the dumpster behind the day-old bread store), but I never regarded any of them as "trash", so perhaps you're right. -- Matt Stoker

Jimbo Wales here --

I grew up in Alabama, I own a 12 gauge shotgun, and my granddaddy was a sharecropper. I feel qualified to speak with some authority on the subject. (I also collect fine wine and own a Ferrari, so maybe my credentials don't count for much here.)

The Simpsons could be white trash, if only [Homer Simpson]? would be a little less diligent about mowing his lawn.

 - The Simpsons are sometimes called yellow trash.

Hank and Peggy Hill of [The King Of The Hill]? are most decidedly not white trash. Hank, after all, is a successful salesman of propane and propane related accessories, while Peggy is a substitute teacher in Ess-pan-yole at Tom Landry Middle School. They are upstanding members of the community, and not even a particularly disfunctional family. (Perhaps the author is not familiar with the show and jumped to a conclusion?)

Admittedly, I'm not very familiar with "The King of the Hill", but I was under the impression that some of Hank and Peggy's friends, who are significant characters on the show are "white trash", in which case the listing would still be appropriate. Is this not the case? -- Matt Stoker

Al and Peg Bundy of Married with Children are almost certainly white trash, even though they are yankees? from Chicago as well. They've probably never eaten possum?, but only because one never died on their front porch.

Drew Carey in [The Drew Carey Show]? is solidly middle class. He is (or was) a manager at a department store. He owns a home. He isn't wealthy, but he surely isn't poor.

Actually, I agree with you on this one. As stated above, I only listed the show because Mimi constantly calls herself "trailer park trash". I don't think any of the other characters could be considered as such. -- Matt Stoker

Cheers? Good grief, no. These people live in Boston! They are barflies, to be sure, but not white trash. Norm was an accountant. Cliff is a postal worker. Ted Danson's character (forgot the name, egads!) is a retired professional athlete. Maybe Karla has a white trash background, but her story is hardly the focus of the show. I never saw a shotgun or chewing tobacco once.

Karla was definitely white trash. Woody's background was white trash. Cliff might be, but more because of his disfunctional relationships than his economic status. At first I thought he definitely was, but now I'm not so sure. Misfit? yes. White trash, maybe not. Norm was usually not white trash, but may have become such during a few episodes while he was unemployed. The other characters definitely weren't. Despite a cast that was primarily not "white trash" the show did frequently deal with or at least make fun of "white trash" issues through the characers of Karla and Woody. -- Matt Stoker

From some of the above posts, I get the impression that many people feel that "white trash" applies predominantly to people in the south or in rural areas. For me (originally from rural Washington State) "white trash" does not cannote a specific locale and can be applied to both urban and rural dwellers. On the other hand the terms "redneck" and "hillbilly" do indeed imply a rural or Southern locale. Do others agree or are all three terms synonymous? -- Matt Stoker

Redneck refers to the actual state of a person's neck as a result of spending a large amount of time outdoors, whether it be bustin sod or running cattle. Plenty of these in Montana, Iowa, Tennessee, Vermont, etc.

Hillbillies: lots of them in the Sierra Nevada racheer in Callyforny.

White trash don't mow the yard (ain't much to mow these last 10 years, what with all that motor oil out there under the sugar maple), or clean up the dog piles from the Blue (Red) Tick operation in the side yard. (Speaking of which, Jimbo, the most impressive Red Tick breeder I ever saw was outside of Paint Rock. He had at least 40 hounds chained up, 35 of which were standing on their damn dog houses howling when we drove by. Cool.) Regular country folk build kennels, down by the barn.

But these are really fine hairs to split here on wikipedia, where most people would not care to know either 1. any such people, or 2. the difference between them.

The emergence and popularity of these shows likely reflected the economic trends of the time, during which rapid growth and prosperity in the stock market greatly benefited the upper classes, but left many in the middle and lower classes feeling left behind and somewhat hopeless. Thus the average American could sympathize with the situation of the "white trash" characters, while at the same time feeling slightly superior themselves.

This is more of an op-ed than a neutral POV. I'd be happy to see it reinstated if anyone could provide actual data suggesting the poor and middle-class have not enjoyed economic gains in recent decades.

Agreed, I'm just glad the page has gotten such a response. Admittedly, I'm not an expert, so please wiki-on everyone! -- Matt Stoker

Continuing in the op-ed vein, my hunch is that the economic prosperity enjoyed by the lower-middle to working class is more related to not being laid off lately, rather than enjoying increasing earnings potential.

Economists prefer data to hunches. If this hunch is true, you could probably find lots of economists who have already proven it with the data. But you won't.

From 1984 to 1994, the percentage of poor American households who possessed a washing maching rose from 58.2 to 71.7. Dryer - 35.6 to 50.2. Microwave - 12.5 to 60. Color TV - 70.3 to 92.5. VCR - 3.4 to 59.7. Personal computer - 2.9 to 7.4. Telephone - 71 to 76.7. Air conditioner - 42.5 to 49.6. One or more cars - 64.1 to 71.8. For many of these items, ownership among the poor had surpassed the national average from 25 years earlier.

The data support the view that the benefits of economic expansion are indiscriminate.

Those same data might also support the view that credit is being extended indiscriminately.

The question is whether the economic expansion benefitted only the rich, or whether it also benefitted those that were not rich. Comments, to be relevent, should touch on this question.

The comment is relevant, thank you; it points out that there is more than one way to interpret the data that you had assumed had only one interpretation.

I would say that the data address the wrong question. Few would argue that the lower economic classes didn't benefit at all from economic expansion, but the real question is how did the benefits to the lower classes compare to those for the upper classes? If middle and lower class incomes rose by 10% and upper class incomes rose by 1000% then "average Americans" may still have felt "left behind".--Matt Stoker

Economists. Data. Harumph. Lot's of ways to interpret economic data: the right way, the wrong way, and my way...

Was it Mark Twain who said that economists are right behind thieves, used car salesmen, and politicians? or was that statisticians? -- mike dill

Twain came up with lies, damn lies, and statistics

Sounds like Twain (who also, in his later days, said something to the effect that God shouldn't expect any gratitude for creating humanity, since no one asked him to). I think his bitterness nearly outraced his wit. ;-) --KQ

Am I the only one who questions the notion that they are politically conservative? While many may staunchly guard their right to own a shotgun or hunt, how many of them are pro-union? How many vote for democrats that support the "working man"? It seems to me that most of the conservative values they might uphold are more of the type of "rural" values that either party might have subscribed to in the past. they are more cultural remnants of a stagnant social class than adherence to a political motivation. Another example might be the confederate flag issue. that's more of a southern thing when you get down to it than a left-right thing.

Additionally, many people I might classify as "white trash" don't espouse any sort of religious doctrine (though some might occasionally to justify some personally held belief). Not because they are atheist, but because they are too scummy to put up with the rigorous moral upkeep of religion, and too dumb to read the anything, let alone the bible.

Being a leftover "rebel" that treats his wife like a servant and loves his shotgun doesn't make him necessarily a conservative, it just makes him a hick.

Yup. White trash is no more likely to vote one way or another, if they vote at all.

The Stars 'n' Bars thing is a riot: How many pickups in West (By God) Virginia don't fly the flag (note to non-usians: West Virginia went Union. They had virtually no economic ties to the Tidewater slave-owning gentry). Same in East Tennessee, a strongly pro-Union region. And it is a southern thing (American by birth, Southern by the Grace of God, etc), not a left vs. right, rich vs. poor, white-trash vs. decent-country-folk thing.

It would be really cool if someone could extend the main page more, with more than anecdotal writing. It's likely that usian white trash shares a lot of common traits with people of similar mentality in other cultures, and this would be fun to read about.

Subsequent discussion moved to racism/racial and ethnic slurs