How White is Your Trash?

How White is Your Trash?

Corruptions of Connotations

While we would all love to believe we are open-minded and free-thinking, there is much to be said about the hidden agendas maintaining the status quo in this country.  Veiled discrimination comes in all shapes and sizes, whether it be to oppress by race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, cultural heritage, level of education, age...this could go on for awhile.  It is the realization of my own ignorance about these hidden agendas that have prompted me to become better informed, and share what I am learning with others in the hopes that these cycles can start to break.  What I have learned so far is this- language is one of the most silent ways (ironically enough) that discriminatory ideals are perpetuated.  This occurs in general discourse, entertainment, news sources, even our own educational system. It is important that we begin to not only recognize the systematic chains that are in place, but begin to understand how to make positive changes by recognizing that we indeed, need to keep talking about these things. Disclaimer: This is not meant to make anyone feel comfortable, sometimes the hardest things to talk about are the ones we should the most.   

  

Many of us would feel we could clearly define concepts such as racism and discrimination. We know what words are "not ok" to say because of their specific and offensive racial connotations.  However, are there words and phrases in Western society which are also equally offensive, and yet somehow widely accepted? This is not to downgrade the harmful and hurtful nature of any discriminatory and racist language, but merely to point out how easily judgments are passed in America.  Specifically, this post is concerned with the term "white trash."  The phrase has origins suspected to be from the period when slavery was still legal in America, as an expression from those who were severely oppressed.  Given what was happening in this country before and after the Civil War, it was one of the few ways slaves could express anger, at a group of people who were only marginally oppressed themselves.  


Years pass and the phrase evolves to become associated with lower class, typically urban whites.  Often due to large masses of individuals flocking to cities to find work as industry boomed, so-called  "respectable whites" began to separate themselves from White Trash.  A wonderful example about Detroit:

"Hillbillies, they said, were lazy, licentious and prone to violence. White Detroiters
were appalled, too, at the way these character traits blurred a rapidly collapsing
social line between black and white racial orders. Southern migrants to Detroit,
white and black, shared regional commonalities in speech and lifestyles that
unnerved native white Detroiters, compelling them to abandon the City
(Hartigan, 1997: 42)."

What this particular turn of phrase is then stating is this: those who are deemed "White Trash" are similar to those who are not white, and therefore in turn, must be devalued as human beings.  The acceptability of this term not only undermines blatant discrimination based on socioeconomic status, but it is yet another direct insult against African Americans. 
The continued ignorance that any of these types of terms can be harmful is exactly what keeps the stereotypes alive.  

- Contributions to this post:

Wilson, J.Z. (2002) Invisible Racism : The Language and Ontology of `White Trash.' Critique of Anthropology 2002 22: 387. doi: 10.1177/0308275X020220040101.

http://coa.sagepub.com/content/22/4/387 (to view this article)