Editing White trash (section)

==Terminology==
The expression "white trash" probably originated in the slang used by [[Slavery in the United States|enslaved African Americans]], in the early decades of the 1800s, and was quickly adopted by richer white people who used the term to stigmatize and separate themselves from the kind of whites they historically considered inferior and without honor, such as "menials, swineherds, peddlers and beggars".<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |year=2012 |title=Hillbillies, Rednecks, Crackers and White Trash |encyclopedia=The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture |location=Chapel Hil |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |url=https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=history_fac_pubs |access-date=August 13, 2021 |last=Harkins |first=Anthony |volume=20 |pages=367–370 |isbn=978-0-8078-7232-1}}</ref>{{sfnp|Wyatt-Brown|2007|p=46}}

"Poor white trash" signifies the "bad poor", in contrast with the "good poor" who were romanticized as "noble and hardworking".<ref name="Drinkard 2014">{{cite book |last=Drinkard |first=Allyson |editor1-last=Coleman |editor1-first=M.J. |editor2-last=Ganong |editor2-first=L.H. |title=The Social History of the American Family: An Encyclopedia, Volume 3 |date=2014 |publisher=SAGE Publications |isbn=978-1-4522-8615-0 |pages=1452–3 |chapter='White Trash' |quote=Simply put, people labeled as white trash are judged to be inappropriately different than 'normal whites'. The white trash slur probably originated in African American slave slang, but middle- and upperclass whites ultimately made it part of the American class structure, first as 'lubbers' then as 'crackers.'}}</ref> One word applied to such people was "tackeys" or "tackies".{{sfnp|Wyatt-Brown|2007|p=46}} There may have been an intermediate time when it was used to describe those who may have been wealthy but had no family roots or good breeding.<ref>[https://www.etymonline.com/word/tacky"tacky (adj. 2)] etymonline.com</ref> It now generally refers to anything that is cheap, shoddy, gaudy, seedy, or in bad taste.<ref>[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tacky "tacky"] Merriam-Webster Online</ref>

Academic Jacqueline Zara Wilson suggests the term is partly rooted in the [[Social class in the United Kingdom|British class system]], brought to North America by British settlers, which tended to privilege [[English Americans|English settlers]] over their [[Scottish Americans|Scottish]], [[Welsh Americans|Welsh]] and [[Irish Americans|Irish]] counterparts. Wilson describes hierarchies within this framework, such as early [[Scotch-Irish Americans|Scots-Irish]] ([[Presbyterianism|Presbyterian]]) immigrants who saw themselves as better than later Irish ([[Irish Catholics|Catholic]]) immigrants.<ref name="Wilson 2002" />

In her book ''White Trash'', Nancy Isenberg argues that the British saw the American colonies as a "wasteland", and a place to dump their [[underclass]] — those people they called "waste people", the "scum and dregs" of society.{{sfnp|Isenberg|2016|pp=xxvi-xxvii, 17-42}} The early term "waste people" gave way to "squatters" and "crackers", used to describe the settlers who populated the [[American frontier|Western frontier]] of the United States and the backcountry of some southern states, but who did not have title to the land they settled on, and had little or no access to education or religious training.<ref name="Drinkard 2014" />{{sfnp|Isenberg|2016|pp=105–132}} "Cracker" was especially used in the South. {{sfnp|Wyatt-Brown|2007|pp=32-34}}

Isenberg also lists other derisive names that have been used to refer to poor whites:

{{blockquote|Waste people. Offscourings. Lubbers. Bogtrotters. Rascals. Rubbish. Squatters. Crackers. Clay-eaters. Tuckies. Mudsills. Scalawags. Briar hoppers. Hillbillies. Low-downers. White niggers. Degenerates. White trash. Rednecks. Trailer trash. Swamp people.{{sfnp|Isenberg|2016|p=320}}}}

===As a racial epithet===

Writing in the journal ''[[Critique of Anthropology]]'', Jacqueline Zara Wilson suggests the term is a "form of invisible racism" which implicitly blames poor whites for their own circumstances. She says that, when used by whites in particular, it "declares the accused to be poor and in one way or another un-civilized, without the excuse of being racially oppressed". She writes that this may be distinct from the way it was historically used by people of color as "an implicitly anti-racist judgement" or a "vengeful" racialized insult against those who were oppressing them, and that its use reveals hierarchies within whiteness itself.<ref name="Wilson 2002">{{cite journal |last1=Wilson |first1=Jacqueline Zara |title=Invisible Racism: The Language and Ontology of 'White Trash' |journal=Critique of Anthropology |date=2002 |volume=22 |issue=4 |pages=387–401 |doi=10.1177/0308275X020220040101 |issn=1460-3721}}</ref>

Journalist [[Annalee Newitz]] and sociologist Matt Wray state that "white trash" is both a [[classist]] slur and a "racial epithet" that casts poor whites as "a [[dysgenic]] race unto themselves".<ref name="Newitz 1997">{{cite book |last1=Newitz |first1=Annalee |last2=Wray |first2=Matt |editor1=Wray, M. |editor2=Newitz, A. |date=1997 |title=White Trash: Race and Class in America |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |pages=2–3 |isbn=978-0-415-91692-9 |chapter=Introduction |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/whitetrashracecl0000unse/page/1/mode/1up?ref=ol&view=theater |chapter-url-access=registration}}</ref>