I always got the message growing up that our family might not have had much (a nice way to say we were poor), but at least we had culture (translation – we’re not white trash). My parents were educated, intelligent, New York City bohemians; they listened to opera and went to museums and drank martinis. We had a roof over our heads and enough to eat; we also went long periods of time without a television, which my parents called “the boob tube.” I purposely refused to have any kind of accent – especially one of the many New York kinds – because I felt it didn’t sound smart enough. In our house, being smart was the most important thing. I wasn’t considered, at least by my parents, to be very smart. Four degrees later, I guess I showed them!
Being “white trash” was the worst thing possible, and it is used without the slightest idea of its history. Historian Nancy Isenberg, in her 2016 book White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, writes that it was started by enslaved Africans in the early 1800s as an insult for poor, white people. She tells us that it was then picked up by wealthy whites, along with the following: 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. America, way before Australia, was where England dumped the people they deemed to be “irredeemable”.
The term is still used regularly to describe people who the so-called elite consider to be beneath them, and it is wrong. It has always been clear to me that every group finds other groups to feel superior to; this is part of our history of immigration. The new people take the worst jobs and living conditions and are expected to rise above it, just like those who came before. Roadblocks and laws are placed in their way to make things harder, because we all protect our own. When they do make it, we figure out other ways to denigrate them. We make fun of their accents or clothing or food; we laugh at their relatives and bumper stickers and traditions (like Pres. Carter’s brother Billy). We are all snobs about some group or culture; we are also the target of others in the same way. One person’s white trash is another person’s bully.
And here we are in the 21st century, reaping what has been sowed. Now we see people who have been oppressed and ridiculed fighting back, and we don’t understand what is happening. We are experiencing a backlash against elitism and pretentiousness, and we don’t like it very much. It is a truth played out again and again; ridicule and oppress and laugh at people long enough, and they will fight back. Treat people as not equal to you, and they will find ways to treat you the same way. Underestimate people and they will make you regret it. And forget that they are people just like us, with emotions and pride and gifts and God-given spirits, and they will make you pay for your false assumptions.
So, maybe we should stop the labeling and name-calling and treat each other like equals. It might be the first time in history that this happens, and I think we would be surprised by the outcome. It would be kind of cool to see what might happen, don’t you think? Imagine – treating others like we would have them treat us. I’ve heard that before. Have you?
Prayer – Holy God, teach us that no person is trash; that every single one of us is made in Your image and worthy of respect. Amen.
Today’s art is a picture of outfits sold for White Trash Parties. Yes, it is a thing.