White Trash

[SciFi Chick]

I've been complaining about the term "white trash" since I was a kid, patiently explaining to people just how racist a term it really is. This article does it more eloquently.

[Rommie]

I confess I've never thought about this much because I never use it, and would seriously look down on anyone calling someone trash, period. But then, I grew up in the suburbs and now live in a city, and suspect this term gets thrown around a lot more in more rural areas (purely anecdotal on my part).

Thinking about it, I guess it's also a bit the equivalent of how in Hungarian you still would call someone a peasant or "village-like" if they're rural/uncultured etc. But in the USA, you wouldn't exactly call someone a peasant, so another term evolved for the same thing.

That said, I should emphasize it's a bit BS when some put all the blame of Trump on the rural, uneducated segment of the population. Plenty of white, college-educated, urban-dwelling people voted for Trump too, and he wouldn't have won without them.

[SciFiFisher]

I grew up with the term "trailer trash" more than "white trash". I have lived in more than one trailer park. The last one was an upscale establishment and called itself a "modular home community".

The usual stereotypes were to be found in the "trailer trash" euphemism. I still like to brag that I was the king of the trailer park because my modular home was the biggest one in the park.