Have you ever heard of Alberta? (ducks and waits for flames)
In any case, white trash does not have any geographical connotation. It is a term, as has been noted, that applies across the spectrum of white people in any nation. All that is needed is for a person to be poorly mannered, ignorant, generally selfish and lacking in class and style to a significant degree. In general, these people tend to be poor, but the number of them (at least around here) defrauding the government of welfare payments, or just lazing around all day tends to discredit the application of the term “working-class”.
And to be perfectly honest, I am 100% in favour of making fun of these people. I grew up surrounded by these people, and have come to despise them with every fibre of my being. I blame them for disgusting me so much that I am now a snob. I have encountered so much laziness, welfare fraud, alcoholism, rudeness, ignorance, intolerance, filth, violence, immaturity, and general degradation of human dignity in living around these poeple that I cannot even begin to think of making white trash jokes as anything but a public necessity. I’m sure I’m going to get nasty responses to this, which is fine, since this whole thread is subjective. But I really, truly hate white trash.
OK, fine. New rule. Only white people can make fun of white trash.
Simple logic. The reason we’re PC about racial slurs is because they are a form of “hate speech” putting a person of another race below you. Hence, blacks (and whites with a lot of black friends) can say nigger, hispanics can say spic, whites can say white trash, etc.
Is that all cleared up now?
Good.
Besides, it isn’t like the white trash have internet connections to defend themselves.
Incidently, has anyone else here seen the show Trailer Park Boys? Particularly non-Canadians, I’m curious. Because these are the kind of people I’m talking about (though I love the show). Gives a pretty good indication of the lifestyle, embellished for TV. I think in the US it’s available on BBC for statellite subscribers.
I have lond thought that Shakespeare’s servants and lower-class characters were intended to be played with Welsh accents, making “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” an extended Welsh joke. Then there’s this nursery rhyme:
[quote]
Taffy was a Welshman,
Taffy was a thief.
Taffy came to my house
And stole a piece of beef;
I went to Taffy’s house,
Taffy wasn’t home;
Taffy came to my house
And stole a marrow bone.
[quote]
which goes on, playing on the twin Welsh stereotypes of petty theft and violence.
I have only slight familiarity with Australian stereotypes but based on it I suspect Foxworthy’s humor would strike a chord there.
White trash may be usually applied to southerners of a certain ethnicity, but I have heard the term applied without thought to geography. I have heard white people refer to certain visitors of Seaside Heights, NJ as “white trash”, for instance.
I have a hard time believing that bad-behaving white people who live in California, Wisconsin, Illinois, and New York do not get the appellation “white trash” applied to them.
On the other hand, I agree that rednecks abound in the South.
Funny, thing, I asked that same question in IMHO a few months back (which I can’t seem to find). I hadn’t heard a Welsh joke either and was wondering if they had any sterereotypes. IIRC it seems the Welsh aren’t free from sheep jokes either, if that makes you feel better
While the mass exportation of American culture seems to have spread the term throughout the English speaking world (based on the responses to this thread), the term is very definitely a racist term in origin.
The phrase meant those white people who were so lacking in quality that their only redeeming feature was that they were not black. “Choices” generally had little to do with it–it was a cultural demarcation based on skin color and poverty in the American South. (The phrase was often used within the black community to refer to whites would should have been deemed “worse” than blacks, but who were “saved” by the color of their skin.)
As some of the older class and color barriers have fallen in the U.S., some people now use the phrase without reference to the older meaning (sometimes substituting “trailer” for “white” to remove color/race from the equation). In this context, some people will view the term as indicating “bad choices” in life, but the reality remains that many people are branded with the term who have made fine choices, but who happen to dress or speak in a way that makes them easy to stigmatize.
Just chiming in here, because this topic is relevant to me. CuriousCanuck and I are writing a musical called, well, TRASH! the musical. It’s about a bingo tournament in a trailer park.
Believe me, a lot of thought on both our parts has gone into exactly how to portray the denizens of the trailer park. How “trashy” is too trashy, what constitutes crossing the line, and what we do and do not want to convey to our audience.
We chose not to go the easy route and not spend the whole show lampooning these… trailer people. It’s just too easy. So too would be giving the characters some kind of hillbilly or Southern accent, so our production notes state that an unidentifiable, hybrid accent is to be used.
We spend most of the musical telling a story (or two), not making fun of “trailer trash” (a term never once used in the show). In fact, the person we make fun of the most is the uppity reporter from the city. The “trailer people” are shown to be kind, genuine people who just happen to live in a trailer park and be obsessed with bingo.
And in any case, the reason why TRASH! is in uppercase is because…
What I meant was, do you feel his jokes skewer the ways and characteristics of Aussie “rednecks,” they way they do American rednecks? Are your rednecks that similar to ours?
There are some subtle differences and we have much less trailer home parks than you do in the states, (we have state housing instead) but generally, as others have described in previous posts.
My Dad has a friend who is a full-blooded redneck. Van was born in the South (Western TN), I believe. He owns an auto body shop, and his work is excellent. However, Van is just about the most DISORGANIZED man I have ever met! He has tools and auto parts all over the place…one day I went over to borrow a wrench, and Van told me: :sheeit boy, I think I left the ratchet over by the shed…if it haint there its probbuubly over under the doghouse…leemmee see , jist a minnute!"
That said, the guy has a heart of gold, and would give you the shirt off his back. But, when hunting season starts…forget about Van…he’s gone for weeks!
My personal issues with calling any human being garbage aside, I think that the crux of the matter isn’t whether or not it’s okay to think badly of people who make poor life choices like drinking to excess, having multiple children they can’t support, or refusing to work or better themselves in any way. I think the heart of it is the application of such labels and stereotypes to anyone who fits any of a wide range of criteria that have dick-all to do with their life choices. Sure, some people make distinctions between poor white people and white trash, but it seems that many people don’t.
Let’s look at the whole trailer park thing, for instance. It’s apparently perfectly acceptable to classify people who live in trailers as “trash” and claim that the vast majority of them are lazy, uneducated, dirty, shiftless, and drink too much. There are probably lots of people who would consider my aunt Sharon white trash. She lives in a trailer in rural Kentucky, never went to college or vocational school, wears t-shirts from Walmart, and works in a bowling alley. Okay, she’s uneducated, but no more so than many of our fellow Dopers who live in traditional houses. Her home is cleaner and better-decorated than the average house, and I’d put money on her to work circles around 70% of the population any day of the week. Eh, but she’s just trailer trash, right?
Erm, well, yes. My husband, born & bred in Nova Scotia, just informed me the other day that I had married a Canadian redneck. I mean, I knew the Canadian part, of course. And that his family was working class I was also aware. Personally I think his politics are way too liberal for redneck-ism, but what does a 2nd generation 1/2 dago, 1/2 kraut know?
Not everyone who lives in a trailer is trash either. My mother lives in a trailer at the moment, and she is a college teacher with a Masters Degree in Psychology, with a Bachelors in Biology and Bachelors in Chemistry.
