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When we judge people based on what's in their fridge during a massive wave of unemployment & food & housing insecurity, we aren't talking about which group of voters has the worst taste in food.
We're talking about "white trash," white supremacy's explanation for white failure. https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1321454268327612425
We're talking about "white trash," white supremacy's explanation for white failure. https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1321454268327612425
We play the same game with well-done steak and ketchup; Kraft singles and processed cheese; Wendy's tomatoes vs. Steak-umms; "clean food" vs. McDonald's dollar menu. https://www.vice.com/en/article/paxqgk/what-cheese-can-tell-us-about-class-in-america
How can "white trash" be white supremacist?
I invite you to read Sherrie Inness's essay, which reframed my thinking on the pejoratives we, white people in particular, use to distance ourselves from impoverished, rural, and esp. Southern white people. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F9781403981059_7
I invite you to read Sherrie Inness's essay, which reframed my thinking on the pejoratives we, white people in particular, use to distance ourselves from impoverished, rural, and esp. Southern white people. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F9781403981059_7
TL;DR: "White trash" & similar labels are a project of white supremacy. These stereotypes seek, via the narrative of white supremacy, to explain why some white people "fail" even though whiteness is both the default of humanity and the superior race, according to white supremacy.
"White trash" and its synonyms scapegoat an underclass of impoverished white people by implicitly and explicitly naming them as socially and genetically inferior.
Think of the tropes applied to impoverished white people, including and especially impoverished, rural white people: ignorance, stupidity, violence, drug dependence, laziness, uncleanliness, ugliness, obesity, bad taste, bad eating habits, intellectual handicaps, and inbreeding.
The project of singling out the genetic inferiority of impoverished white people also has the effect of casting doubt on their whiteness. The history of public health is riddled with attempts to categorize impoverished white people and disabled white people as non-white.
The slur "mongoloid" for describing a certain type of syndromic facies associated with some chromosomal disorders is one such attempt. This so-called "inferiority" was also attacked through forced sterilization as well as imprisonment, medication, and abuses like lobotomies.
"White trash" is the excuse for white failure. There must be an explanation, otherwise it starts to become clear that whiteness is not superior. The answer is "These people aren't really white, and if you lose everything, neither are you."
But the side effect of this self-defense mechanism of white supremacy is making whiteness visible. Inness goes into this much more eloquently than I can, and I think it's worth reading and thinking about which people we feel comfortable throwing in the trash.
Thinking about how white supremacy protects itself demands nuance. Does being scapegoated by white supremacy mean all impoverished white people are good? No. Victimhood and oppression don't confer a saintly moral status.
You can be an impoverished, disabled white person and be a white supremacist -- I'm a white, disabled person and I still struggle with rooting out all the prejudices I've been taught all my life, and I suspect I'll be engaged in that until I die.
There’s also a whole other conversation to be had about that “compare yourself to other NYT readers” bit, but that’s for another day.
(You might be thinking "wow, that's a lot of work for white supremacy's proponents to do just to justify the structural failings of a white supremacist society," and, well, yeah, but that hasn't stopped anyone from re-inventing phrenology every year.)
