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:
“With sweetest milk, and sugar, first
I it as mine own fingers nurst.
And as it grew, so every day
It waxd more white and sweet than they.
It had so sweet a Breath!”
—Andrew Marvell (16211678)
“Thought is a garment and the souls a bride
That cannot in that trash and tinsel hide:
Hatred of God may bring the soul to God.”
—William Butler Yeats (18651939)