It’s a phrase used in my family although since the last SDMB scurfuffle, I’ve attempted to delete it from my vocabulary, because yes, people’s feelings are more important to me than an easy-to-the-tongue phrase when there are so many other words I could use instead. Part of communication is understanding the connotation your word choice has for the receiver, and choosing a word that means what they think it means.
But no, no one in my family EVER meant “white people living like black people.” Mostly because black people just weren’t on our radar at all. The only black people I “knew” as a kid were The Huxtables, who I would have been ecstatic to have lived like!
They meant, “people living at a lower standard of living than other people, and proud of it,” with a side of, “there’s literal trash in their yard, why don’t they pick it up?!” ETA: I don’t think they even noticed the “White” as a race signifier - I didn’t, until the SDMB scurfuffle.
It was a cautionary phrase; being just barely in the middle class and without significant financial safety nets, my mom was terrified that I’d end up “White Trash” if I hung out with “the wrong people” (none of them Black) and made “poor choices” (alcohol, smoking, drugs, teen pregnancy.)
Dude, I’m not a racist, but white culture suffers from a malaise. Jim Crow is over, but white folks can’t get over it. The loss of white supremacy rankles, and even though white folks try to hide it in dogwhistle language, the racism oozes through.
This is a white people problem. White leaders need to stop making excuses for white people’s behavior; they need to call out white people when they engage in behavior like this (especially their politicians–have you listened to white politicians? Some of the most disgusting vile crap you could hear, it’s amazing it’s allowed on the airwaves).
So, yeah, this term is part of that white cultural malaise I was talking about. Stop making excuses for white people, and buckle down to the hard work of fixing the culture.
To me, every racial slur is a synonym for ‘trash’, so there’s little point in unpacking the racial connotations of ‘white trash’. You’ve already demonstrated you’re willing to dehumanize someone to the lowest level, so already I know what I need to know about you.
In that case, it’s not so much the phrase itself that’s racist, as the context from which it came.
I think you’re guessing, or perhaps your sample of the 1% is atypical. The top 1% is not all Leona Helmses. Those who parade around on the media and pretend to talk for them might be, though.
IMHO, equating any group of human beings with garbage demeans the speaker more than the subject, so it’s probably a good idea to avoid the term.