White trash is an American English pejorative term referring to poor white people in the United States, especially in the rural South, suggesting lower social class and degraded living standards. The term suggests outcasts from respectable society living on the fringes of the social order who are seen as dangerous because they may be criminal, unpredictable, and without respect for authority whether it be political, legal, or moral. The term is usually a slur, but may also be used self-referentially by whites to jokingly describe their origins.
Read more about White Trash: White Trash Versus Cracker, Hillbilly, Okie, and Redneck, History, White Popular Culture, Black Popular Culture, In Literature
Famous quotes containing the words white and/or trash:
“If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect he will grow fat? If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth, and compel him to stay there, he will not be contented, nor will he grow and prosper. I have asked some of the great white chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please. They can not tell me.”
—Chief Joseph (c. 1840–1904)
“Thought is a garment and the soul’s a bride
That cannot in that trash and tinsel hide:
Hatred of God may bring the soul to God.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)