Reply #70: Read "Bastard out of Carolina" by Dorothy Allison

[TalkingDog]

Having grown up the child of a mill-working single mother and the grandchild of tenament farmers I can tell you some basic differences between poor whites and poor white trash or even plain old white trash:

Being poor simply means you have no money. You don't blame the world for your woes, you aren't surly and resentful or "entitled".

You attend to your comportment. You are not loud or vulgar or rude. You develop yourself to the best of your ability and means. You take pride in your work, yourself, your home and grounds and their cleanliness, even though you may not own the property you live on.

From popular culture: The Waltons would be poor. No money, but good hearted, hard working, community spiritied, determined to be good people in spite of circumstances.

Being white trash usually implies being poor, but with many of the nouveau riche the term can also apply (hence the Britany Spears reference). The general idea is that rural poor white people are always and automatically: racist, stupid, ignorant (stupidity is innate, ignorance is willful) dirty, drunken, incestuous, corrupt, vicious, murderous and somehow sub-human. Now, throw Southern in on top of that and you'll start to understand some of the commentary on this board when politics and the South come up.

From popular culture: The Simpsons has their poor white trash couple.

Roseanne Barr (loud, vulgar, unkempt woman who does not "know her place")

On British TV the show "Keeping Up Appearances" has some good examples of poor white trash. Onslo, the brother-in-law is classic. But that show also has a social agenda. The protagonist is always being shown her "proper place" in society every time she tries to, as we say in the south, "get above her raisin's"

And to be honest, the whole concept of white trash as a perjorative is predicated on the social agenda of: you must look, dress, act, be like people who are "better" than you in order to get ahead in the world.


Racist? In and of itself no. It does not automatically include every white person when it is used as an epithet. It is, however, bigoted and prejudicial.


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