It’s a strange jealousy, isn’t it? But it generates a lot of interesting threads here.
I have no problem with the term white trash because I’ve always used and heard it used to be associated with a lifestyle and character, not wealth or location.
My parents’ neighbor is prototypical white trash. Total boorish asshole, keeps his place a mess, ill-behaved juvenile delinquent kids that he and his wife have no interest in educating or controlling, etc. He is a fairly successful contractor who is squarely within the upper middle class and lives in a suburban house in Southern California. Both my parents and I have called him white trash on numerous occasions, all for things he is perfectly capable of changing.
To equate “white trash” with “nigger” is absurd. Yes, I find the term “white trash” mildly offensive, but at times it is a useful descriptor. “Nigger” is never a useful descriptor.
“If allusions to racism, especially for the purpose of satirizing racism and its cousins, are confused with racism itself, then I think it is time to stop writing.”
- Doug Hofstadter
Jesus H. Christ.
It’s just a word.
Get over it.
I can think of worse problems that the world faces right now than someone saying any of the words contained in this thread. You all sound like a bunch of snot-nosed kids.
Cisco said what I tried to. 
90% of the time I have heard the term “white trash”, or related terms like “trailer trash”, or “(specific low income area) trash”, it has been used by other white people to describe those who are seen as socially or economically inferior. It clearly does not apply to all whites, and as far as I know didn’t originate with blacks in the way hnkey (I hope I struck the right vowel) probably did. Since there is no catch all ‘racial slur’ in common use by the general public, people are left with white trash. By contrast, from the mouth of a racist, a ngger is any black person, whether he is a stereotypical crack smoking thug from the projects or pedriatic surgeon or a Nobel Laureate.
I do think the term “white trash” is somewhat racist to minorities in this sense: some white people are in the lowest socioeconomic categories, along with a relatively higher percentage of blacks, Hispanics, and Indians. A number of people in any of the ‘minority groups’ are expected to be poor and shiftless, but not honest-to-God white folks. If a white person is dirt poor or lacks middle class ‘refinement’ there must be something really wrong here.
Roddy Doyle, in his book “The Commitments”, has his main character Jimmy Rabbitte say:
“The Irish are the niggers of Europe and Dubliners are the niggers of Ireland. The northside Dubliners are the niggers of Dublin”?
(In Alan Parker’s movie, nigger is replaced by ‘black’)
So say it loud, I’m a black/nigger and I’m proud!
Some links:
http://riscf50.unibg.it/fa/fa_stel.html
http://www.pgil-eirdata.org/html/pgil_datasets/authors/d/Doyle,Roddy/life.htm
Mark (Mum from Limerick) :b
You have to earn the title White Trash. Just becasue you are poor, that doesn’t mean you have to be dirty and have five cars parked in your yard with trees growing through them, and have a bunch of shitty little kids running around to boot. I also think WT can be fairly used to describe people of any race who choose to live like they are trying out for the Jerry Springer show.
I must admit a certain sympathy for Daisy Cutter’s point as well. It seems rather silly that we all need to run around saying “N Word” instead of nigger like a bunch of six year olds when the word seems to be in quite common rotation on BET and urban radio. Or is that nigga’? I get so confused.
“Mommy, mommy! Billy said the S word!”
Much ado about nothing in my mind.
Donno where the ? came from. Not Roddy Doyle. Colm Meaney, maybe!
I can’t believe how insensitive and politically incorrect you are all being.
Don’t you know the acceptable term is*** pigmentally impaired non-recyclable refuse***?
Hamster ate your comma, huh? Now my Redskin/cracker ass is aware there’s some hubbub about your empty head. 
You want a name? I’ll give you a name. Bull Conner. Maybe Lester Maddox. If you don’t know those names and what those men did then you do not understand how hateful, vile, corrupt, the word Nigger is or the history of injustice it contains.
Daisy Cutter, why don’t you bone up on Birmingham and Pickrick before you really step in it. While you’re at it, head to Selma.
OK, let me clarify my position:
If you insult me, I’m going to react. I have every right to react, no matter what color my skin is that day. If it’s red from being in the sun, if it’s dark from being in the mud, if it’s white from being rather cold that day, it shouldn’t matter. I’m still the same human being on the inside.
Don’t say I’m privileged. I’ve never been given a break I didn’t earn, aside from not having been born with anything more than minor genetic defects. To tell me that I’m purely the product of the racism of the people who lived in this country before my ancestors even moved here insults me, insults my family, and insults everyone else who has helped me along the way.
And, finally, don’t say I’m bigoted. Ever. I’ve never in my adult life treated anyone with anything less than they’ve shown me. Don’t accuse me of the crimes of those who have lain centuries in deep graves.
I find this very puzzling. Assuming you find “white trash” to be a term on par with “nigger” (which I, a white girl, frankly do not), and further assuming you objected enough to the “white trash” label to start a Pit thread about it, why would you drop the gratuitous “nigger” into the title?
Are you showing someone how offensive they are to your group by being offensive to another group, totally innocent of any part in any exchange to date, and probably surpised and dismayed to find a particularly painful racial slur in a thread title? Are you, basically, demonstrating that someone else has been an insensitive ass by being an insensitive ass yourself? Do you generally demonstrate to one person how painful it is to be slapped, by turning around and slapping someone else?
Because if so, your tactic sucks.
Preach it, brother.
I have a proposal: since that argument is always inevitably followed by the standard “you can’t help it if you’re poor!” comeback, could we all agree to use “trailer trash” instead? You know, to get rid of the “white” part, since that seems to be what gets everyone’s undies in a bunch.
That is, if people that live in trailers don’t come running in with the torches and pitchforks, screaming bigotry. Of course, you don’t have to live in a trailer to be “… trash”.
I got it! How bout “Jerry Springer wannabes”? Lame, yes. But the only people who’ll pitch a hissy are those who have been on Springer. Or want to be. And those people are all insane anyway, so who gives a fuck.
Use of “White Trash” is racist! What? Mebbe I should be color blind in my “Trash” assessment. I can understand the argument that it is actually a backhanded insult against minorities with the assumption that the trashiness means “like minorities”, however, that assumption in itself is racist, and an artifact. As a country raised white man, commonly known as a “RED NECK”, the words “white trash” hold no racial sensitivity and no hint of incorrectness to me.
Very succintly posted, trashiness has little to do with race, economics, gender, sexual orientation, religion etc…
It’s a behavior thing.
–Mr. Tortuga
…except one thing. I’ve never heard of the term “black/red/yellow/brown trash” used as a blanket term to describe the people from whom I descend, communicate with, am relatives with, and hardly know.
Although I must confess I don’t know those fuckers because they’re a bunch of goddamned rednecks.
Fortunately for myself, I am not a redneck.