White trash
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White trash is an American English pejorative term referring to individual or groups of lower social class Caucasian people that the speaker considers to lack social status. It is most frequently used as a slur to describe financially, economically or culturally disadvantaged Caucasians. It may also be used self-referentially by white North Americans with higher socio-economic status to jokingly describe limitations they sense in their culture[citation needed] and may also be used as a within-group expression among disadvantaged white Americans to express solidarity. At various points in the 20th and 19th centuries, the term was frequently prefixed by poor to form the unit "poor white trash." "White trash" should be differentiated from the term "redneck", as each has a unique historical etymology and context in modern usage.
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[edit] History
The term white trash appears to have originated in the Baltimore and Washington, DC area during the 1820s post-revolutionary war reconstruction boom. During that period, many poor people migrated to the area, and white and black semi-skilled workers were competing for the same jobs, resources and marriage partners.[1] The term white trash first came into common use in the 1830s as a pejorative used by upper-class United States southerners of all races against financially disadvantaged caucasians.[citation needed] It was synonymous with the slurs sand hiller, "sandlapper", and clay eater. The last term was because Upper-class Southerners assumed poor white farmers farmed ineptly on poor land, and consequently had nothing to eat but clay.[citation needed]
In 1854 Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the chapter "Poor White Trash" in her book A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin. Stowe tells the reader that slavery not only produces "degraded, miserable slaves", but also poor whites who are even more degraded and miserable. The plantation system forced those whites to struggle for subsistence. Beyond economic factors, Stowe traces this class to the shortage of schools and churches in their community, and says that both blacks and whites in the area look down on these "poor white trash".[1]
[edit] In literature
- 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.
- In Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind, and later the movie by the same name, the term is used several times, always pejoratively, by both the black and the white characters. Neighbor Emmie Slattery is described by Mammy as "poor white trash" when Ellen O'Hara goes to midwife her illegitimate baby.
- In William Faulkner's 1953 novel Requiem for a Nun, Ratcliffe is described as "father of an equally long and pure line of white trash tenant farmers".
- In Harper Lee's 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the Ewell family is referred to as "white trash."
- In Maya Angelou's 1969 autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she mentioned that the "powhitetrash" kids would come from down the hills and cause trouble at her grandmother's store in Stamps, Arkansas.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
[edit] Bibliography
- Berger, Maurice (2000). White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness. ISBN 0-374-52715-6.
- Goad, Jim (1998). The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies Hicks and White Trash Became Americas Scapegoats. ISBN 0-684-83864-8.
- 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 0-89815-189-9
- Pitcher, Ben (2007). The Problem with White Trash - Review of M. Wray (2007) Not Quite White, Duke University Press. ISBN 0822338734. darkmatter journal
- 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 1-59213-021-6
- Webb, James (2004). "Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America". Broadway. ISBN 0-7679-1689-1
- Wray, Matt and Annalee Newitz, eds. (1997). White Trash: Race and Class in America. ISBN 0-415-91692-5.
