"White trash repairs..."?? What the heck??

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At least to me, words like "white trash", "hillbilly" and "redneck" fall more into the category of classist rather than racist, in the same vein as calling something "ghetto". I don't really have too much of a problem with them until they're used by people who want to make a big stink about other people using similar terms for poor cultures within other races, then it becomes hypocritical. I've actually had someone jump all over me for having described a bad deal as getting "gypped" for example, so it would be hypocritical for that person to turn around and use white trash or redneck as a descriptor. For general use though I think they're OK.

Just Googled what "white trash" means, must be an American term. It seems like the US equivalent to a British "chav", and it's not racist at all, it just so happens that your phrase for it contains the word "white"

Yeah, it's chav.

Shh, you can't say that anymore, it's racist now

Whoops.

It's also a bit like Pikey. I'm not sure if that's still legal. heh.

An acquaintance of mine from Australia told me their equivalent of rednecks are referred to as 'bogans'

I was just about to post "more classist than racist" and then clicked the next page and you've already done it. As a middle class white person, this term has always really bothered me. It's always used in the context of "look at those ridiculous poor people". It is most gruesomely hypocritical when I've heard fellow white middle class liberals (yes, I'm a liberal ) use it to mock the cars and clothes of poor white people (they don't have much money so they buy cheap clothes- how strange!) but get irate at others who use "ghetto" to mock the cars and clothes of poor black people.

The cruel subtext is that somehow the poor white people actually deserve their poverty (since they haven't taken advantage of the advantages of being white in America) and since it's their choice to be poor (they should have gone to University like the rest of us white middle class liberals) it's ok to mock them. Blech! I used to get into a lot of dorm arguments on this topic. Mocking "white trash" people was sport at the college I went to (for which it was hardly unique, I think).

Okay, so it is a class distinction among white people in particular. So, therefore, anyone who makes less than x amount annually is allowed to be considered "trash"?

No, there are certain stereotypes that people generally apply. These include mullet hair styles, atrocious fashion sense, ad-hoc vehicle and house repairs...

That's a vogan and that's not a "redneck" but a white collar bureaucrat if anything.

I don't see what the big deal is. I've spent years tinkering with stuff and I've made some jury rigs that could possibly be classified as white trash repairs. Given, it takes an inventive soul to pull off most of the featured jury rigs (one that comes to mind is a person who used folgers coffee cans as acoustic amplifiers for his radio), but I don't think anyone who had their repairs classified as white trash would care. The only people who raise hell over it are people who exist outside the demographic that are just plain picky.


It's nice to try and stomp out racism, but try and pick your battles. If the targeted demographic isn't bothered by a particular word, then you shouldn't worry about it either.

I dunno. I always used the term white trash to describe ignorant bigots. So by my personal definition, someone who's poor and white isn't white trash just because of his class affiliation. On the other hand, a narrow minded bigot is white trash, regardless of having money and status.
But that's just me.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I once used the term once in a tattoo parlour (I don't have any ok mom).
the context was say that the tazmanian Devil (cartoon character)
was a "white-trash totem"
the tattoo artist (a parsee) said

I laughed for about three days.
and was cured of ever using the term again.

-Jake

for those not in american context of the use of the term I have never heard black folks or Latinos use it they seem to prefer the terms Cracker (from whipcracker), peckerwood (from woodpecker because of whitefolks noses). The latinos or rather Chicanos the group I have the most experiance with (my paternal Grandmother is from Sinaloa) mostly say Gringo (prolly means greek) when they require a slur.
so the use of white trash is more of a in race term.

The only time I ever heard a Black person utter the phrase "White Trash" was when I overheard a Black coworker explain to another Black coworker that the term was what "Whites sometimes call other Whites".

So I think of it as perhaps a "class-ist" term, but hardly racist, since the term is used almost exclusively by Whites for other Whites.

Indeed the term seems to be being eclipsed by the related term "Trailor Trash".


If "White Trash" offends you- how about '"Euro Trash"?

Where is the OP to stick up for the rights of rich idle European jet setting nere-do-wells when they need it? What did Claus Van Beulow ever do to hurt anyone-well-besides try to kill his wife to ger her inheritance?