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On the other hand, “white trash” seems explicitly racist (that is, anti-black) because it is based on the notion that a white person in similar roles to a black person (i.e., servants, sharecroppers, menial laborers) is thereby distinguished from other white folks. More like black = trash (MTCicero’s grouping of “97% of the African American population” with “goddamn white trash” is pretty direct here).
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Where I grew up (rural central Alabama) white trash had/has less to do with socioeconomic standing (though most are poor) than things like morality, work ethic, etc.. A family that’s struggling and on welfare and food stamps but good salt of the earth people would not be considered white trash; a woman who has three kids by three fathers and has been to jail for check forgery and whose current baby daddy in residence is a dog fighter would be white trash. They’re white and they’re trash hence “white trash”. (I’m not defending any use of the N-word, but it’s true that while many used it interchangeably with black or colored [which was rarely used as a pejorative] there really are some who used it only for “black trash”, and “white trash” is a pejorative and equivalent of that [dishonest, thieving, amoral, substance problems, domestic violence, etc.]).
White trash are not necessarily poor. Jerry Lee Lewis has earned millions and is still worthy of the term, and when Roseanne and Tom Arnold married they actually said “we’re everybody’s worst nightmare: white trash with money!” at the reception, to which many responded “Yup”.
Of course this is regional and there are variations. The term cracker is the same: in Florida and the Gulf region of other states as well as south Georgia ‘Cracker’ wasn’t pejorative: it meant “white yeoman farmers”- i.e. poor white- while in other areas it’s on par with white trash.
For True Blood fans, Sookie Stackhouse is a cocktail waitress at a honky tonk, relatively uneducated, usually broke or close to it, lives in a run down old house and drives an old beat up car, but she’s a good person- nobody would call her white trash. Her brother Jason kind of has friends in both camps, while his co-worker Hoyt is a redneck. Sam Merlotte’s birth family would be considered white trash but due less to their poverty (in the rural south as in most agricultural reasons where people were historically dependent upon the weather and rainfall and things beyond their control it was generally accepted that any family can become impoverished) but to their amorality (dog fighting, prison, skipping out on bills, etc.).