Talk:White trash

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The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future:

Flynt, Wayne (2004). Dixie's Forgotten People: the South's Poor Whites (new ed.). Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-34513-4.
Henderson, Anita (2003). "What's in a Slur?". American Speech. 78 (1): 52–74. doi:10.1215/00031283-78-1-52. ISSN 1527-2133.
Hartigan, John Jr. (1997). "Unpopular culture: The case of 'white trash'". Cultural Studies. 11 (2): 316–343. doi:10.1080/09502389700490171. ISSN 1466-4348.
Hartigan, John Jr. (2005). Odd Tribes: Toward a Cultural Analysis of White People. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-3597-9.
Newitz, Annalee; Wray, Matthew (1997). "What is 'White Trash'? Stereotypes and Economic Conditions of Poor Whites in the United States". In Hill, Mike (ed.). Whiteness: A Critical Reader. New York University Press. pp. 168–184. ISBN 978-0-8147-3545-9.
Schinko, Carsten (2010). "Why Trash? Thirteen Ways of Looking at Poor (White) Folks". Amerikastudien / American Studies. 55 (1): 143–164. ISSN 0340-2827. JSTOR 41158485.
Sullivan, Nell (2003). "Academic Constructions of 'White Trash'". In Adair, Vivyan Campbell and Dahlberg, Sandra L. (eds.). Reclaiming Class: Women, Poverty, and the Promise of Higher Education in America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. pp. 53–66. ISBN 978-1-59213-021-4.
Taylor, Kirstine (2015). "Untimely Subjects: White Trash and the Making of Racial Innocence in the Postwar South". American Quarterly. 67: 55–79. doi:10.1353/aq.2015.0014. ISSN 1080-6490. S2CID 145307795.
Wray, Matt and Newitz, Annalee, eds. (1997). White Trash: Race and Class in America. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-91692-9.

Suggested fixes

At User:Beyond My Ken's suggestion, I'm making some suggestions for fixes here. There is lots of unfounded, outdated or unsourced information on this page, so I made a bold edit. My edits were reverted with minimal explanation (e.g., without saying which parts were problematic), so I am opening a discussion here for editors to get involved in so we can move forward with this.

Stylistically, this article also reads like a personal essay, rather than an encyclopedia entry, with lots of editorialising, comment and hyperbole. Some of these are matters of taste, but where they stray into POV, weasel words and peacock prose, I think they need to be addressed as well.

I believe that the existing article is of poor quality and has some serious problems which have to be addressed. We should avoid ownership attitudes when trying to come to a new consensus, and revert only when needed (WP:ROWN).

For example, the first paragraph in the history section is quite long but only has a single (quite old) source for some quite contentious information. It implies a large number of children were tricked into indentured servitude in the Americas, when more recent scholarship suggests most children transported in this way were sponsored by family members to come work on their land. Just because a single source makes such a claim, if doesn't mean it's noteworthy or should be given equal weight to other info.

Scholarship also indicates that the number of indentured workers at any one point was less than the overall number of people who were free wage labourers and ex-indentured servants at any one time (except for a few notable exceptions). The Wikipedia page Indentured servitude in British America confirms most of this and is at odds with this section, which feels like ira paraphrasing a single author's view.Lewisguile (talk) 09:26, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I will make a new topic for each area I believe needs improvement. We can then discuss them individually as requested. Lewisguile (talk) 09:26, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Beyond My Ken

I respectfully disagree with your opinion. I feel that the edits made by Lewisguile on this article were well evidenced, accurate and an important restoring of a factual telling of these histories.

I hope that a decision would be made which is a fair and respectful telling of this topic.

Thank you Redraspberryswirl (talk) 19:11, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. So far, we've only had your response. I'll check back in a few days, when hopefully a few more people will see this. I am hoping the issue raised, and which triggered reversion, was more to do with stylistic choices (i.e., my copy edits) rather than the factual and bias issues I corrected. If so, then hopefully it'll be a quick job to address the specific issues raised below, and we can return to the subject of copy edits at a later date. Lewisguile (talk) 15:34, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I should add, some of the edits which were reverted weren't mine, either. There were helpful edits made by others which I agreed with and which were also undone. Lewisguile (talk) 09:10, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Redraspberryswirl has made only two edits, this one and one to your talk page. Odd that someone would swoop in only to agree and then vanish. Doug Weller talk 10:15, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Probably a new editor/dabbler. The person who wanted me to start the BRD cycle also posted on my page and then hasn't replied since.

Do you disagree with any of the key points? It would be helpful if you could discuss any improvements here.

Lewisguile (talk) 19:16, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Factual issue: tobacco brides

The article claims 'The Virginia Company also imported boatloads of poor women to be sold as brides.' This is misleading. The women were transpored to America, but they weren't "sold". The men paid for their transport but they were incentivised with land, inheritance and the right to choose their own husbands.

The Atlantic confirms, 'Although the financially strapped Virginia Company was eager to recoup the costs of sponsoring the Jamestown brides, it was not selling women.'

History.com also agrees: https://www.history.com/news/jamestown-colony-women-brides-program

Wikipedia already has a page outlining what the tobacco brides were, so this part of the article should be aligned with that page.

Suggestion: reword or add context.

Lewisguile (talk) 09:54, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also, "boatloads" is arguably loaded language. A more neutral approach would be to indicate roughly how many women were transported. Lewisguile (talk) 11:56, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Lewisguile HIstory.com is not a reliable source. See RSNP. Doug Weller talk 10:12, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's good to know. The Atlantic and the other sources from the page on here should be more than enough. Thank you. Lewisguile (talk) 19:13, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I checked and I didn't use History.com for that section. The current wording uses RS from the tobacco brides page. Lewisguile (talk) 06:38, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Back to the slur or not-slur question

This may be regarded as an un-wikipedian entry but it is beyond me - and probably a lot of other ordinary people who see this article - that it is not made quite clear in the article that this is a racial slur first and foremost.

Some examples are listed where a few people chose to wear this epiteth voluntarily. I'm sure similar examples can be found with diligent research in the case of other racial slurs (if this would be sufficient to demote these other slurs to "pejoriative terms", let me know, I'm willing to do the research). But as I understand, there is no such source for this article that would enumerate the slur and non-slur usages of "white trash" through history, and would make a comparison between the numbers. Until there is no such source, it remains a matter of interpretation. I'm sure many editors here would be happy to point me to some sources - deemed "trustworthy" by some remote ejudicating process - that claim that this term is not a racial slur at all.

I didn't bring sources that claim the opposite, instead I would like to submit the question: how much more obvious does a racial slur has to be in order to be admitted as such?

I'm simply appealing to the sanity of the editors. Again, I cannot be critical enough about archived discussion where people were arguing along the lines (without being dismissed) that majority races cannot experience racism, and therefore, no pejorative term can be a slur against them.

I wouldn't bother bringing this up if these were not the arguments on which this matter hinges on. I find these arguments completely inadequate, and I think it would do a great deal of good - without offending ANYONE - to give this term the proper damnation by calling it what it is, a racial slur. 84.206.25.242 (talk) 13:25, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sadly, this isn't how it works. If there's consensus among WP:RS that this is a slur, we should call it a slur. If they're split, then we should say "so and so says it's a slur; so and so say it isn't". It's as simple as that. If you have some reliable sources to indicate either way, please share them. Our personal opinions aren't really relevant here. Lewisguile (talk) 15:21, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia doesn't editorialize, let alone provide damnation. As I have argued previously, reliable sources generally describe terms like "redneck", "hillbilly", and "white trash" as socio-economic signifiers and not primarily racial slurs. In short, it's the word "trash" that's derogatory, not the word "white". Straying into WP:FORUM territory here, but I don't think Dolly Parton is being racist towards white people when she expresses pride in her "white trash background". —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 17:17, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]