I'm a little surprised you got downvoted on this. Where I am in Ohio, "white trash" doesn't mean "poor people who happen to be white (in addition to brown people who are by default trashy)", it implies going above and beyond to create misery while indulging in stereotypically white rural culture. The people in the apartment across the street from me who shout in the street about their domestic issues at two in the morning and have every cop car in town at their door every couple of weeks are White Trash. And unlike most people involved in issues of social class, they could instantly become Not White Trash by just knocking it off.

Associating a class-based epithet with the worst behaved people you know isn't an argument against the existence of stereotyping the poor.

It's even worse, really. If you call somebody "white" trash, you're noting that this is a white person in a situation that you would expect of a nonwhite person. Expecting nonwhites to be poorer in the US is rational. Expecting nonwhites to be badly-behaved, stupid, and criminal is just racist. I'm sure you'll object to this, but I guarantee you don't call anybody "black trash."

It's an unfortunately named epithet. Where I grew up, the slur was "trailer trash" which is also nasty but is at least inclusive of all races.

I guess in part it's become a replacement for "redneck". Watching and listening to some older media, I swear they were using "redneck" closer to how someone would use "white trash" nowadays.

While I still think "redneck" carries a negative connotation in many places, it also seems to be a lot less negative nowadays, And I'm more likely to hear it in the context of self identification or (while somewhat still derogatory) to refer to a kinda idealized version of an unruly and unsophisticated, but fun rural people, and to many, the new redneck stereotype is a sort of role model. Hell, half the "rednecks" I knew in HS were middle class kids who's parents had good job and lived in nicer suburbs than my parents could afford.

There have been some artists trying to take back the "white trash" moniker and use it in a "yeah that's what I am, what about it?" sort of way.

The terms "white trash" and "redneck" have some overlap but they are not equivalent. The former denotes a socioeconomic class while the latter denotes a specific perspective of the world.

There's a lot of "redneck pride", but I don't think anybody has "white trash pride".

They may not use the exact words "black trash", but I think terms like "ghetto" are largely equivalent. And it's not just about material wealth, you can have "ghetto" behavior and be very rich.

I don't object to expecting everyone, regardless of skin color or ancestral origin, to act polite, intelligent, and law-abiding.

I think people are defining words differently or just being argumentative, your experience is exactly how ive seen white trash used, living on the coasts on the US.

I will make the case that Elon Musk is the premier example of white trash.

We don't call him that because he's rich.

I think your confusion on this issue proves OP correct that class in America is a silent issue.

Explain what I'm getting wrong? Acting trashy isn't exclusive to poor people. Remember paris Hilton in her 20s?

Sure, but she wasn't white trash, she was rich and famous and got invited to all the cool rich and famous parties. She was being eccentric, and perhaps sometimes went slumming, but that didn't change her social class.

she was wealthy and trashy. how is a description of behavior a class in society? anyone at any moment can stop being white trash, just stop acting trashy. Youll still be poor, sure, but not white trash.

You don't understand the point. An important aspect of class is what you like to do, what you consider ok, what you appreciate or accept in others. People who would be catalogued by others as "white trash" do not consider their behavior to be "trashy" in this sense, they don't think there's anything wrong with it.

You saying "just stop being trashy" is exactly proof that you view them as lower class than yourself. It's similar to people who think saying "ain't" is somehow less correct than "isn't", or that rap music is uncultured. All class markers.

i think your mixing up terms like class and culture. not all low class people have the same type of behavior.

> what you like to do, what you consider ok, what you appreciate or accept in others.

this is describing a culture

> exactly proof that you view them as lower class than yourself.

i don't think you understand what your talking about now. another post said the same thing. trashy is undesirable behavior from people. not acting trashy doesn't move you between classes. You just stop fitting the description of trashy.

You think of class as layers of wealth. But that's only part of it. The most important part is culture.

>Do they understand how little of their world I’m familiar with? Do they understand how much implicit knowledge they take for granted that I don’t have?

If you have that knowledge, you have the connections to regain your wealth. The people who act trashy, if they would learn to not act trashy, they most likely would change class - have different friends, make more money.

You're hearing something that other people are not if you've ever heard someone refer to Paris Hilton as "white trash." They might call her "trashy," but never white trash, because that would be absurd. She calls you white trash.

Class and culture are mixed up, they can't be completely separated.

Also, when you call some behavior "trashy", it's undesirable from your point of view. The people engaging in it may not find it trashy at all.

Class is relatively subtle because it is context dependent - classic example: a rich person wears ripped jeans to show they are rich, a poor person wears ripped jeans because they can't afford new jeans. And the situation seems silly until you cotton on to the insight that this game is being played around the ambiguous middle who can afford new jeans, but if they wear ripped jeans would be mistaken for the poor...

"White trash" would be a reference to a culture - beliefs, expectations and norms held by a group of people. Paris Hilton may have acted trashily, but is not part of that culture. The beliefs, expectations and norms that she is working to would be different and probably upper class ones.

I think Thomas Sowell has some interesting scholarship on the topic, with regards to the roots of lower class culture in America.

If you look at this from a class perspective instead of race (hard in the current media environment) it makes sense.

Rather than focus on the white in “white trash” think about the word trash.

The term "white trash" denotes a socioeconomic class with distinctive cultural affectations stemming from having grown up in a very poor rural environment. The term is also regularly used as an insult against people not of that class, because it is viewed as such a low status thing to be. You can be educated and well-behaved and still unambiguously be white trash, and commonly referred to as such by other people both descriptively and pejoratively. It isn't a choice per se.

People who leave that environment are often very conscious that they are discriminated against for having the affectations of that class and try to erase them. Many people who grew up as white trash will self-identify as such in certain contexts, even if they no longer are, because it accurately conveys the socioeconomic class they came from and are not ashamed of it per se though people may treat them poorly for it.

I grew up as the platonic ideal of white trash. No one can tell today and people are surprised if they find out. When I travel into that environment I can still code switch.