# "White Trash" **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 20, 2004, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149 "2004-09-20T16:14:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2004, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149/61 "2004-09-22T19:36:45Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > [More cuisine options](http://www.scots.com/recipes/default.htm). Green on mauve? Ouch! Did a penguin named Opus design that page? ---
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2004, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149/62 "2004-09-22T21:53:02Z")
> [@yojimbo](#): > > How can this term be described as a racial term? Just because it’s got white in it doesn’t make it so. Surely it’s a provincial term/insult rather than a racial one. > > I always thought about it as more of a way of mind than anything else but I’m not from the US so probably have it wrong. Exactly. Poor, dad does blue collar work, live in WV etc do NOT = White or Trailer Trash. At least as far as what I, also raised not so well off and white (well I’m still white :D, but a teensy bit better off), have ever seen the term used. It refers to a people who, as you said have a certain state of mind, and are purposefully ignorant, classless (as in booger picking in public classless, not as in not fitting into a socioeconomic class), deliberately don’t work and expect to have the world handed to them on a platter etc. When someone says “white trash” I, way before he was ever aired, saw “springerites” in my mind. I honestly don’t “get” my fellow caucasions for being offended at this. Those springerite “white trash” types DO exist, and they ARE trashy, and they are trashy by choice (reference Springer Titles; “I slept with my mama’s brother, and he’s MY brother too” (with the requisite “screw YOU, I look good honey, you’re just jealous” and so on). YOU (collective you), by virtue of not sharing that same mindset, are NOT white trash, no matter how poor you were as a kid, or what your dad did for a living, so why get upset about it? It doesn’t apply to you. ---
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2004, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149/63 "2004-09-22T21:54:44Z")
Sorry, forgot a thought. I’ve seen rich folks who definitely fit the mindset of being “white trash” as well, so imho, being poor has nothing to do with it. ---
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2004, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149/64 "2004-09-22T22:14:47Z")
> [@Loopydude](#): > > I was always simultaneously amused and annoyed whenever someone who first met me at school would say “Wait, you’re from Maine? Seriously?” Like somebody from Cos Cob, CT, has any business being amazed that we’re not all beer-drinking shit-kickers. That’s interesting. My personal “stereotype” of what people from Maine are like is based (I’m ashamed to say) on Stephen King novels (blush). I always had the feeling that they were quiet, deep thinkers who say “ayuh” a lot, and who basically turned into heroes because of their basic “Maine-ness” under the right circumstances.🙂 Which I think, makes a good point that another poster mentioned here, that of (paraphrased), “you think that the term ISN’T about money? where are YOU from”??? It got me to thinking, could those who were raised in the south take the term more as an insult than those of us raised in the north, because of the history of the term in various parts of the US? It seems as if the person who said “hollywood is full of 'em” is from the West Coast, that’s where I was raised too (well, way NORTH West Coast). And as I said in my previous posts, and as some other posters have also said, the term does NOT mean what class you’re in, but the class, or lack thereof, with which you conduct yourself. ---
**Author:** ![alice\_in\_wonderland](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alice_in_wonderland/32/176_2.png) [@alice\_in\_wonderland](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alice_in_wonderland)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2004, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149/65 "2004-09-22T22:18:19Z")
> [@CanvasShoes](#): > > I honestly don’t “get” my fellow caucasions for being offended at this. I actually always assumed it was predominately person’s of color who found the term particularly offensive, although I could be totally wrong here. I think there are very few people who could equate “white” with being insulting or derogatory, being that “whites” are traditionally the holders of all the power. Of course, I could be way off base here. Apparently I was totally out to lunch regarding the Ambrosia thing. (Who new?) ---
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2004, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149/66 "2004-09-22T22:23:26Z")
> [@alice\_in\_wonderland](#): > > I think there are very few people who could equate “white” with being insulting or derogatory, being that “whites” are traditionally the holders of all the power. Good point. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2004, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149/67 "2004-09-22T22:44:19Z")
Damn Paul… now you’ve got me picturing you flying through the air in the General Lee, with Cooter in the back seat and Boss Hog on your tail. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2004, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149/68 "2004-09-22T23:20:34Z")
“White trash” doesn’t really flow. Both syllables are stressed and one has to deal with the irritating double t. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2004, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149/69 "2004-09-22T23:46:33Z")
> [@CanvasShoes](#): > > That’s interesting. My personal “stereotype” of what people from Maine are like is based (I’m ashamed to say) on Stephen King novels (blush). Well, Stephen King writes a ripping good yarn, but he’s full of shit. At least he’s forthright about it, though. John Irving is worse. One of the reasons I could semi-enjoy “The Cider House Rules” as a guilty pleasure is that it bore absolutely no resemblance to anything I had ever encountered in my life as a Mainer. Most unfortunately for me, when I was in school, Carolyn Chute was all the rage. Only later, and much to their chagrin, did the literary cognoscenti discover that, rather than being the radical feminist darling intially they initially supposed when they adopted her as one of their own, Ms. Chute was a gun-toting millinarian whackjob who would spit in a New York intellectual’s face as soon as shoot them between the eyes. On many an assigned summer reading list was “The Beans of Egypt”, and I had the marvelous pleasure of actually having to sit through a Freshman (oh, excuse me, _First Year Student_) Seminar on this _quintessentially_ Maynard novel, among other fictional portrayals of the American _sans culottes_. Listening to a kid from Greenwich CT discuss how “The Beans of Egypt” corroborates his sad misgivings over the plight of the Maynard Impovershed, who he would watch from the veranda of his family’s summer cottage on Orrs Island is an experience no Maine citizen should be denied. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2004, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149/70 "2004-09-22T23:51:16Z")
Hmmm. My white trashy spelling skills show through above. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2004, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149/71 "2004-09-23T01:30:05Z")
So, about a year ago, I was at the Steinhardt Aquarium and Museum of Natural History, in San Francisco, and I saw a family there that looked like a Jeff Foxworthy routine come to life. Mom had big, big hair and far too much makeup. Dad had a mullet, handlebar moustache, and a sleeveless monster truck t-shirt. The eldest kid, who was maybe seven or eight, had a mullet _and_ a rat tail, and a t-shirt just like dad’s. I first noticed them in the African wildlife hall, when the kid ran up to a display and pushed his face against the glass. Dad leans over, grabs the back of his shirt and hauls him back from the glass with a stern, “Don’t be touching the exhibits, now!” Later, in the cafeteria, they were sitting a couple tables away and the kid was getting a little rambunctious. His mom didn’t waste any time in telling him not to settle down and not bother all the other people trying to eat lunch. The kid didn’t need to be told twice, and was perfectly well behaved throughout the rest of the meal. White trash? Not from what I saw. Now, the kids who were running wild, climbing under ropes and generally being a pain in the ass while their well-dressed parents chatted vacantly on expensive-looking cell phones… they were another story. ---
**Author:** ![Voodoochile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/898d66/32.png) [@Voodoochile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voodoochile)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2004, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149/72 "2004-09-23T01:32:44Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > I’m sure that very satisfying for someone born to poor parents. All they have to do is say “I’m upper class,” and POW!, they will be magically transformed. > > Seriously, i’m no economic reductionist, but your “analysis” of what constitutes class in America is so naive and simplistic as to be laughable. Well, I was born to dirt poor parents, my dad is the epitome of White Trash, as is my sister, though my brother, mom and myself are not. I never made more than 20k a year until I was 30, now Im too close to 40 and make 6 figures, all with a GED, never having been on welfare, never having taken unemployment, never having gotten or asked for a state or federal grant, never having asked for or gotten a bank loan and I still have yet to have a credit card, my ATM works fine. Ive lived in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Connecticut, and Ohio and for 9 months, Sweden. I went to 4 junior highs and 4 high schools in three states. Ive been to Sweden, Scotland, France, Italy and Germany; I speak passibly good Swedish, French and Mexican Spanish, and throughout all of this my favorite pastime has been sitting and drinking and smoking and shooting the shit with people I just met and asking/discussing our different views on things. The only time I have ever run into class-as-birth bullshit in the US on any comparable level to what I encountered in europe was in New England and the few moronic idiots who expected respect because their ancestors supposedly came over on the Mayflower, and its very possible that my laughter is still ringing in their ears. So why dont you go into a bit more detail as to how my impressions and conclusions through my life about class in the US vs. europe are simplistic and naive? ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2004, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149/73 "2004-09-23T02:45:50Z")
**Miller** Nicely told. Trash isn’t necessarily about economic, hair style and real estate locale of which you reside, it is how you behave and conduct yourself at all times and how people look upon you. ---
**Author:** ![Nawth\_Chucka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c57346/32.png) [@Nawth\_Chucka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nawth_Chucka)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2004, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149/74 "2004-09-23T02:50:23Z")
> [@Sattua](#): > > “White trash” doesn’t really flow. Both syllables are stressed and one has to deal with the irritating double t. Aww, bless your little heart, Sattua, but you don’t say the first ‘T’; you make a hard sound at the back of your throat to suggest a consonant might go there. Then you follow up with the two-syllable ‘trah-yush’. Then you walk away w/ your nose in the air and a smug smile of superiority that you get from feeling better than _people you’ve never even met_. (I use the term ‘you’ as an example, I don’t think YOU would do that. I don’t think anyone on here would, as a matter of fact.) Not to hijack, but I’ve noticed a couple people saying that ‘hillbilly’ is deragatory or some such; my Mom, a coal miner’s daughter of the Kentucky flavor, (Frog Pond Holler, not Butcher like Loretta Lynn) has always referred to herself and her ‘people’ as hillbillies. I’ve never heard her say ‘hillfolk’, perhaps that’s a VA thing? But I’ve asked her before if she felt hillbilly was akin to redneck, and she thought the latter was an insult and the former was not. She says she’s from back in the hills, her father’s name was William, so what’s to argue? A fact’s just that. And, if you curl your lip when you say it, anything’s an insult. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2004, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149/75 "2004-09-23T04:01:22Z")
> [@Portia](#): > > I’ve never heard her say ‘hillfolk’, perhaps that’s a VA thing? Hell if I know! I was a kid and for all I know somebody was getting pretentious and I didn’t get it. But with white trash, I’ve always heard that “hard sound at the back of your throat to suggest a consonant might go there” as almost the sound of someone fixing to spit. Appropriate, considering how it’s used. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2004, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149/76 "2004-09-23T05:13:33Z")
> [@](#): > > I actually always assumed it was predominately person’s of color who found the term particularly offensive, although I could be totally wrong here. > > I think there are very few people who could equate “white” with being insulting or derogatory, being that “whites” are traditionally the holders of all the power. Blacks were among the foremost users of the term in its original sense–expressing a finely honed sense of irony. The term originally meant a person who was so utterly lacking in any redeeming features that the only thing that prevented their utter condemnation was that they were not black. As spoken by blacks, (and I am not aware of any hard evidence that the term was coined by blacks), it was a recognition that no matter how wealthy, educated, and virtuous a black might be, society still recognized the most disreputable member of white society as having more worth or value. ---
**Author:** ![Abbie\_Carmichael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/49beb7/32.png) [@Abbie\_Carmichael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abbie_Carmichael)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2004, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149/77 "2004-09-23T06:01:01Z")
> [@Voodoochile](#): > > The only time I have ever run into class-as-birth bullshit in the US on any comparable level to what I encountered in europe was in New England and the few moronic idiots who expected respect because their ancestors supposedly came over on the Mayflower Seriously? Too funny, considering how many **millions** of Mayflower descendants are running around. ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2004, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149/78 "2004-09-23T18:05:17Z")
> [@UrbanChic](#): > > … it is applied to those who wallow in their slovenly surrounding. These are people who sit around and watch Springer all day, beat their kids and spouses on a regular basis, procreate like it’s going out of style, hurl racial epithets with abandon, bathe once a week and don’t got no time for no fancy book learnin’… You say that as if it’s a bad thing. 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-trash/265149.md?page=3)