^
Tsk-tsk. I already explained it.
I seriously have no idea where you think you gathered any of that. Or why you think “white slut” and “white whore” are common terms that people acceptably throw around.
I’ve always thought it was racist. Trash is trash, there’s no reason to add “white” to it. It suggests that all whites are good but, some of the poor ones are trash along with (add group here) that aren’t white. It’s like saying there’s no reason to call anyone “black trash” because they all are trash and it doesn’t need the descriptor to clarify any difference.
No, you didn’t “explain” it. You stated it, without explanation.
Yeah, you’re right. The originators clearly had specific set and definitions in mind. “White trash” means low lifes differentiated from others only by the fact that they’re whites. “Black trash” or some other is thought to be more encompassing and is therefore racist.
I come across them in media often enough, even in lyrics, I think. God help the guy who tries to put “Black trash” in song.
Simply using the word “white” IMPLIES that there is only a small percentage of “bad” whites, while there is no need to add a race to other types of trash because there is no distinction between any of the income classes of these groups.
It’s the same as saying this:
White=95% non-trash
All other races=100% trash(because they are not white)
busted
“White trash” is a deeply racially offensive term. I cannot imagine how such blatantly offensive racial slur can become mainstream and acceptable.
Terms such as ‘White supremacists’ and ‘Moslem fundamentalists’ describe the evident or perceived attributes of a subset of the racial population. I do not consider them offensive at all. But trash? What exactly does that convey - apart from the evident fact that you dont like their faces?
How about *black trash *and brown trash? I have never heard them bandied about. Maybe those who would throw around slurs like white trash consider the black and brown races entirely trash, hence voiding the need to invent a slur that only applies to a subset of those races?
^
Suggest you look at the economic aspect of it.
Okay, but the question isn’t “is it acceptable” (we know that it is), but rather, “should it be acceptable” on a philosophical level.
It may be acceptable to say, but words and phrases carry implications with them. Here we are questioning the implications of saying that someone is “white trash,” as opposed to just “trash”. Society may accept the phrase as is, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t doing harm to the mindset of its members, by making the implications it does about race relations
What exactly are you watching or listening to that regularly uses “white slut” as an acceptable name to call someone?
Who? Me?
“Jumped up white trash” is equally apt; I, too, was born in Texas and leaving that hell hole was the best thing I ever did for myself.
The first time I ever heard the term was from a white person. He was making an analogy: Blacks:Niggers::Whites:White Trash. I was too focused on why this white guy was using the N-word in a conversation with a black person to think about the deeper meaning of 'White Trash '.
I’ve never heard a black person use the term. To me, it’s always been a slur for (certain) white people by white people.
Which is what, exactly? Whites are generally economically better off than blacks. Browns (with the exception of Indians) are better off than blacks but not whites.
There is no “economic aspect” to this purely racial slur.
+1
Amen, Brother!
(I was actually born in a Western state. But I grew up in Texas, from age five.)
The term speaks to a persons social class (and indirectly to race), but it’s not referencing an entire race of people-- instead, it aims at a subset of that group, appealing to classism. The reason “White” is in there, is to differentiate from the status quo, which as you’ve stated, generally represents white people as being better off. The latter fact is a key reason the phrase has any context.