I'm afraid that the new, improved version strikes me as an overblown, long-winded, largely irrelevant (to the subject) exercise in politically correct WASP-bashing victimology. -HWR
I utterly disagree. In fact, I'm impressed by your ability to be "overblown, long-winded, [and] largely irrelevant" in only one sentence. What an ugly abuse of the English language: "politically correct WASP-bashing victimology". Try using something other than buzzwords some time if you actually want to make a point. --
TheCunctator
Oh, I think you got my point. But perhaps not. Obviously the author is so committed to the "whiteness is privilege" mantra that he cannot see the absurdity of claiming that "white trash" are "non-white". -HWR
I'm fine with someone disagreeing with what has been put forward so far, but what is the alternative to it? It's not like "victimology" (a great word, by the way, like Delillo's "Hitler Studies") doesn't come from somewhere. That is, people really were victimized by upper class people who specifically identified themselves as White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. They explicitly excluded anyone who wasn't that. And they implicitly believed that to be WASP was to be chosen by god. That was as true for the puritans as it was for Henry Ford.
But you are right, HWR. There isn't an easy answer, even if WASP bashing seems like it should be so true. Most abolitionists were WASPS. And even if Henry Ford was a fascist and desperately afriad of all of the "colored" people of the world, be they black or Italian or irish or german, his son and grandson established some of the most progressive and powerful charities in the western world.
So, I say again, what is your alternative? And more generally, how should we deal with these entries that are so clearly not about fact in the sense that we normally imagine in an encyclopedia. 100 years ago, they would have pretended or not been aware that a controversy even existed. I can't count the number of antique encyclopedias I have read which talk of the "five races of man" --the black, the white, the yellow, the red and the brown-- with a complete sense of authority and "factuality". I mean, how do we construct useful, factual entries about important concepts which are, by their very existence, controversial and opinionated? I personally reject the quasi-journalistic minimalist approach of saying only what is absolute fact as being both too dictionary like and generally useless. Rather than dealing with a problem, I feel that such an approach just avoids it. And avoiding these issues, letting them fester, is its own kind of action and therefore judgement. By saying noth we are expressing an opinion and affecting the debate.
But what should we do? --trimalchio
Debate that was in this space has been moved to racism/racial and ethnic slurs
My biggest beef with the article right now is that it refers to a previous Wikipedia article as such, which is not likely to be regarded as having much significance to anyone but Wikipedians. The same point can be made by referring to a "stereotypical" account of white trash, or something like that.
I think it would be great if we could get that Berkeley dissertation writer, or someone similar, to comment on the article now. --LMS
- Change made... though the original entry is preserved (and could use some cleaning up I guess) it is contextualized as a common definition. I have tried to remove any other Meta-Wikipedia commentary from the article. Please point out any more errors if you see them. My writing style can tend toward the stylized, and that is problematic for an encyclopedia article. Thanks, Larry. --trimalchio
Trimalchio, would you be willing to move general discussion that's in this entry to a more general page, such as [Racial and ethnic slurs]
? or [Racial epithet]
? or something? A lot of the discussion in the entry (which is great) is not specific to the history of "white trash" but is a more general discussion of the nature of ethnic slurs. I'm hesitant to do it myself because I'm not sure what the entry should be called. --
TheCunctator
Moved it. Not sure if it would be better in Wikipedia commentary, but racism is where it is at right now. Good idea. Thanks. --
trimalchio
I'm not sure that any of the arguments I've seen here are all that valid. First, I've never seen the term white trash used in a "white, but not WASP" way. That said, I do believe that many of the original recipients of the title tended to be of Irish and Scots-Irish descent, and were mostly day laborers on farms or later, in the mines. More recent usage has much less to do with race or economics, however, than with a certain type of behavior. That behavior is not synonymous with Redneck behavior -- the folks on
King of the Hill are definitely rednecks, but not white trash. Where I come from (Washington by way of CA and GA), you're considered trash if you don't keep up your home (rented or owned), if your animals are better off than your kids, if you have any motor vehicles parked in the front yard -- especially if they are in parts, but not if they are being actively repaired, if you don't dispose of your empties properly (that is, if you throw them in the bushes or the back of the truck), and if you don't keep yourself up properly. It also might include types of favored dress and behaving in public as if you are in private. It often includes a high level of general ignorance, but I have known very well educated people who acted like "trash." For foodservers, there is a special category -- people who use eating in a restaurant to run the servers ragged, jack up a high bill, and don't tip. These people usually order filet mignon butterflied and cooked extra well.
Too much makeup and hickies are often considered a sign of trashiness...so...I guess i'm trying to say that this is just way too subjective a subject for a NPOV
JHK
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