# Thoughts on the term "White Trash"
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [December 25, 2013, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139 "2013-12-25T09:05:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Spaghettifrier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spaghettifrier)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2013, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/1 "2013-12-25T09:05:08Z")
this should be a fun one…
I’ve always thought, since the tender young word I first heard this phrase being thrown about, that it was just blatantly RACIST! And it baffles me as to why it is acceptable to say it in a climate of such racial (over)sensitivity.
What about black trash? Minority trash? Is this just regular trash, then? If someone calls someone “trash”, is it then assumed the person is not white, because the term “white trash” was not used?
I’m surprised that no one seems to mind the usage of this, considering how vigilant we are about other terms and phrases. 😕
On a somewhat related note? Honey Boo Boo = Pure Class .
---
### Author:  [@DataX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DataX)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2013, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/2 "2013-12-25T09:55:14Z")
> [@Spaghettifrier](#):
>
> this should be a fun one…
>
> I’ve always thought, since the tender young word I first heard this phrase being thrown about, that it was just blatantly RACIST! And it baffles me as to why it is acceptable to say it in a climate of such racial (over)sensitivity.
>
> What about black trash? Minority trash? Is this just regular trash, then? If someone calls someone “trash”, is it then assumed the person is not white, because the term “white trash” was not used?
>
> I’m surprised that no one seems to mind the usage of this, considering how vigilant we are about other terms and phrases. 😕
>
> On a somewhat related note? Honey Boo Boo = Pure Class .
I’ve always felt this way and don’t really get it either. Sometimes it seems the apt descriptor - and I have used it, but I feel somewhat guilty about doing so.
---
### Author:  [@Blackberry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blackberry)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2013, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/3 "2013-12-25T10:48:33Z")
It is pretty racist, but it’s also descriptive. There can be any kind of “trash” but white trash is a particular kind. It’s not just that this person happens to be trashy and, surprise! is also white. It’s that they’re trashy in the way that trashy white people are trashy.
I’m not defending its use. But we know what it means.
---
### Author:  [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2013, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/4 "2013-12-25T11:10:23Z")
Yeah, but that’s true of most racist terms; they resonate because the stereotype is descriptive (at least superficially) of a group of people. I know I’ve used it in the past and shouldn’t. It does seem that it is slowly becoming taboo. Was it David Sedaris who said that white trash is the last racist term you can still use in the US?
---
### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2013, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/5 "2013-12-25T11:19:56Z")
I grew up among White Trash in Texas. It is a completely apt term for them.
---
### Author:  [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2013, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/6 "2013-12-25T11:33:48Z")
Yeah, I’ve always thought it had weirdly racist undertones, not just for mentioning whites specifically, but also a connotation of “They’re so worthless they might as well be black” or some such. ☹
---
### Author:  [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2013, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/7 "2013-12-25T14:23:55Z")
_white trash don’t call me that
white trash you don’t call me that baby
you know i love you baby
don’t you think just maybe
the way you talking to me
would send a chill right through me
white trash don’t call me that_
- SCOTS
---
### Author:  [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2013, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/8 "2013-12-25T14:36:46Z")
> [@chrisk](#):
>
> Yeah, I’ve always thought it had weirdly racist undertones, not just for mentioning whites specifically, but also a connotation of “They’re so worthless they might as well be black” or some such. ☹
Interesting you say that; W.J. Cash made that point in 1941 in _The Mind Of The South_. He pointed out that economically, and usually politically, poor whites were in the same boat as blacks - disenfranchised and marginalized. The only thing that kept the Bob Ewells above the Tom Robinsons was their skin color. And since, as Kris Kristofferson put it, ev’rbody’s got to have somebody to look down on, they were vicious and violent in their determination to stay above the blacks. “We may be poor illiterate cotton-pickers, but we ain’t n----rs!”
That’s why the Populist movements and politicians like Pitchfork Ben Tillman, Theodore Bilbo, and Cotton Tom Watson, who aimed at breaking the political control of the wealthy Democratic elites, were also virulently white supremacist.
There was a bit of 19th century doggerel I found in a midcentury collection of Southern folklore, attributed, perhaps inaccurately, to a black sharecropper, that seems pertinent:
_My name is Ran,
I wuks de san’
But I’d druther be a nigger
Than a po’ white man._
---
### Author:  [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2013, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/9 "2013-12-25T14:43:26Z")
Gotta make a historical correction to my last post - the Populist politician and Georgia Senator Tom Watson was not nicknamed “Cotton Tom”; that was an Alabama Senator named Tom Heflin, who _was_ unabashedly white supremacist, but was a Democrat rather than a Populist.
---
### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2013, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/10 "2013-12-25T15:02:27Z")
Paris Hilton proved beyond all doubt that you don’t have to be poor to be white trash.
But how about [you](https://thetfp.com/tfp/tilted-humor/58557-25-ways-tell-if-youre-white-trash.html)? Take the test and [see if you’re white trash](https://thetfp.com/tfp/tilted-humor/58557-25-ways-tell-if-youre-white-trash.html).
---
### Author:  [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2013, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/11 "2013-12-25T15:49:04Z")
It’s very racist. That’s why I try to be sensitive and substitute the term _trailer trash_.
---
### Author:  [@EmilyG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EmilyG)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2013, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/12 "2013-12-25T16:05:00Z")
Maybe it’s usually white people who use the term, so they consider it okay?
---
### Author:  [@BlankSlate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlankSlate)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2013, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/13 "2013-12-25T16:13:34Z")
I don’t consider it a racist term, because acting like trash is a choice. Not all poor whites are white trash, and sure, you can have black trash, Asian trash etc…
---
### Author:  [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2013, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/14 "2013-12-25T16:23:42Z")
I often hear right here on the dope that blacks have not had enough time to recover from so many generations of slavery and abuse. Well surprise! we have a culture of whites in this country that have suffered very similar circunstances.
```
My ex wife grew up in a black shanty town in Mississipi. 7 girls, 5 different fathers in house with no runnig water. The one room house was 12X16 feet. My wife was born in a cotton field and delivered by black ladies who were also picking cotton along side her mother. They wore clothes from made from flower sacks or if they were lucky they might have gotten some hand me downs. They sometimes ate red dirt soup so as not to go to bed hungry. Her mother could not read or write and she had no clue her her father was. Sex was how they bought groceries. We really shouldn't call people trash if we don't know their story.
My wife was able to gradually overcome this and become successful in her own right but it was a painful struggle pushing her into social situations where she was paralyzed with fear. Alcohol was the only way to over come this fear and it eventually took its toll. I don't call anybody trash.
```
---
### Author:  [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2013, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/15 "2013-12-25T16:27:27Z")
It is racist, and yet… I have used it too, like many here. I think it may express, among other things, that they are trash and don’t have the excuse of being descendants of slaves nor of having been held back by prejudice.
---
### Author:  [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2013, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/16 "2013-12-25T16:30:43Z")
As a white person who is one step removed from white trashiness, and who has previously lived in situations which went beyond W/T right on to tweakerville, let me say that the term doesn’t bother me one damn bit. In fact, it can be conveniently apt and descriptive, depending on how many broken down cars are stored on your lawn, or how many motorbikes are parked in your living room.
The term is not racist – it’s critical of someone’s class or income status, not their race. (On the other hand, saying “black trash” or “Mexican trash” _would_ be racist!)
IMHO, of course.
---
### Author:  [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2013, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/17 "2013-12-25T16:31:09Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#):
>
> It is racist, and yet… I have used it too, like many here. I think it may express, among other things, that they are trash and don’t have the excuse of being descendants of slaves nor of having been held back by prejudice.
The fact is many are held back by predjudice and they are in fact decendants of poor share croppers in many cases. By the time they become young adults they have pretty much been heavily damaged, not beyond repair but the odds become stacked against them.
---
### Author:  [@Becky2844](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Becky2844)
#### Post date: [December 26, 2013, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/18 "2013-12-26T07:10:04Z")
> [@buddha\_david](#):
>
> As a white person who is one step removed from white trashiness, and who has previously lived in situations which went beyond W/T right on to tweakerville, let me say that the term doesn’t bother me one damn bit. In fact, it can be conveniently apt and descriptive, depending on how many broken down cars are stored on your lawn, or how many motorbikes are parked in your living room.
>
> The term is not racist – it’s critical of someone’s class or income status, not their race. (On the other hand, saying “black trash” or “Mexican trash” _would_ be racist!)
>
> IMHO, of course.
YES. One time my drunk step-father led the horse into the living room just to prove to my mother that he _could_. If you’ve never had a horse in your living room, you don’t know what fun is.
---
### Author:  [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)
#### Post date: [December 26, 2013, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/19 "2013-12-26T07:21:16Z")
So far I gather:
“White” is acceptable and not racist only if it is self-deprecating (like white trash, white whore, white slut, etc.)
“White” is not acceptable if it glorifies white peopl. American pride, Irish Pride, Celtic pride, Teutonic pride are OK. Say “White Pride” and people know what you’re on about.
Pride of different colors are NEVER racist, since they sprang long after the holocaust and are clearly identified with certain groups, like Mexicans.
---
### Author:  [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)
#### Post date: [December 26, 2013, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139/20 "2013-12-26T07:23:21Z")
> [@buddha\_david](#):
>
> …The term is not racist – it’s critical of someone’s class or income status, not their race. (On the other hand, saying “black trash” or “Mexican trash” _would_ be racist!)
>
> IMHO, of course.
Huh?? How is “white trash” not racist, but “black trash” IS racist? I’m confused…
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-term-white-trash/677139.md?page=2)