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ht "ht Trh": trtp nd n ndtn f Pr ht n th .. nnl Ntz, tth r Minnesota Review, Number 47, Fall 1996 (New Series), pp. 57-72 (Article) Pblhd b D nvrt Pr For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mnr/summary/v047/47.newitz.html Access provided by Middlebury College (11 Dec 2015 16:54 GMT) Annalee Newitz and Matthew Wray What is "White Trash"? Stereotypes and Economic Conditions of Poor Whites in the U.S. "White trash" is, in many ways, the white Other. When we think about race in the U.S., oftentimes we find ourselves constrained by cat- egories we've inherited from a kind of essentialist multiculturalism, or what we call "vulgar multiculturalism."^ Vulgar multiculturalism holds that racial and ethic groups are "authentically" and essentially differ- ent from each other, and that racism is a one-way street: it proceeds out of whiteness to subjugate non-whiteness, so that all racists are white and all victims of racism are non-white. Critical multiculturalism, as it has been articulated by theorists such as those in the Chicago Cultural Studies Group, is one example of a multiculturalism which tries to com- plicate and trouble the dogmatic ways vulgar multiculturalism has un- derstood race, gender, and class identities. "White trash" identity is one we believe a critical multiculturalism should address in order to further its project of re-examining the relationships between identity and social power. Unlike the "whiteness" of vulgar multiculturalism, the whiteness of "white trash" signals something other than privilege and social power. The term "white trash" points up the hatred and fear which undergird the American myth of classlessness. Yoking a classist epithet to a racist one, as "white trash" does, reminds us how often racism is in fact directly related to economic differences. As a stereotype, "white trash" calls our attention to the way discourses of class and racial difference tend to bleed into one another, especially in the way they pathologize and lay waste to their "others." Indeed, "subordinate white" is such an oxymoron within dominant culture that such a social posi- tion is principally spoken about in our slang, where we learn terms like "white trash," "redneck," "cracker," and "hillbilly," just to name a few. We don't say things like "nigger trash" precisely because "nigger" often implies poverty to a great extent. Are some African-Americans called "niggers" because they are black, or because they are poor? There is no hard and fast answer to this one—it's difficult to distinguish between race and class when discussing the derogatory meanings of "nigger." In this way, "nigger" is a term like "white trash." This conflation of race and class in America often mixes us up quite a bit, as most ideologies which perpetuate injustice tend to do. When people are kept guessing about what kinds of social forces oppress them, they are less able to defend themselves. Naming the connections between 58the minnesota review racial identification. White trash lies simultaneously inside and out- side of whiteness, becoming the difference within, the white Other which inhabits the core of whiteness. Finally, the term "white trash" reminds us that one of the worst crimes of which one can accuse a person is poverty. If you are white, calling someone "white" is hardly an insult. But calling someone "white trash" is both a racist and classist insult. It's worth asking why this is so. Perhaps the scar of race is cut by the knife of class. This is not to say that race is in any way reducible to class. Clearly, the knife cuts both ways. Yet all too often in discussions of racial identity class is ignored, dismissed, and left untheorized. We argue that leaving class out of anti-racist criticism not only creates a theoretical blindspot, but can also play into class prejudice. We cannot understand many types of social injustice without deploying theories which wed anti-racist agendas to anti-capitalist ones. Analyzing white trash is one way to begin launch- ing, and ultimately popularizing, such theories. Some Definitions of White Trash Historically speaking, the earliest recorded usages of the term "white trash" are found in references to "poor white trash," which date back to the early nineteenth century. Historical dictionaries of Ameri- canisms typically ascribe origins of the term to black slaves. If we are to believe these dictionaries, the term originated as a black on white la- beling practice and was rather quickly appropriated (by 1855) by up- per class whites. Both terms appear to have remained in use by blacks and whites throughout the nineteenth century. Today, although "white trash" seems to see more frequent and widespread usage, the term "poor white trash" remains with us, a reminder that it is, after all, an explic- itly economic as well as racial identity. For this reason, "white trash" presents us with the possibility of a radical transvaluation of what it means to be white, poor, or both. For contemporary writers and activ- ists like Dorothy Allison or Jim Goad, "white trash" becomes a potent symbolic gesture of defiance, a refusal of the shame and invisibility that come with being poor. It also becomes a way to call attention to a form of injustice which is often ignored, given popular conceptions of the U.S. as a meritocracy. Even if calling oneself "trash" seems to smack of self-loathing, it nevertheless serves to reveal prejudice against the impoverished in America. Sometimes it is strategic to be named something terrible rather than to have no name at all. It is difficult to determine just exactly who or what we are talking about when we use the term "white trash." The questions "how do you define white trash?" and "who exactly are you talking about?" demand answers. These questions are basically ways of asking whether or not we think the stereotypical images of white trash America as violent, incestuous, and criminal are true. That is, most people understand white Newitz/Wray 59 trash not as a clearly-defined socioeconomic stratum nor as a cultural group, but rather as a complex set of social representations, an amal- gam of well-known stereotypes. White trash as we know it is both an economic identity and something imaginary or iconic. When we talk about white trash, we're discussing a discourse which often confuses cultural icons and material realities, and in effect helps to establish and maintain a complex set of moral, cultural, social, economic, and politi- cal boundaries. To interrogate this discourse, we need to ask where its representations and stereotypes come from, what motivates them, how they are produced and taken up, and by whom. From this perspective, we can begin to see how the category "white trash" is used to blame the poor both for their poverty and for social problems which can be found at all levels of the economic ladder. For example, stereotypes of white trash and "hillbillies" are replete with references to dangerous and excessive sexuality; rape (both hetero- and homosexual), incest, and sexual abuse are supposed to be common practices among poor rural whites. Yet we know that sexual abuse occurs in all segments of the population. White trash gets associated with and blamed for the kinds of sexuality people may experience no matter what class back- ground they have. This is likewise the case when poor whites are ste- reotyped as virulently racist as compared to their wealthier white coun- terparts. As long as the poor are said to possess such traits, people can convince themselves that the poor ought to be cast out of mainstream society—they deserve what they get. Having established that we need to critically interrogate these representations, it is important that we return to the vexing questions of just who we think we are talking about. Even those of us who would lay claim to some white trash past (say, those of us from impoverished and /or under-educated white families or communities) might find it hard to claim this identity now, due to the considerable social distances we've traveled to reach our various locations within the academy. How do we represent the material realities, the real life experiences of poor, under-educated, and otherwise marginalized whites in our own discourses and practices? One way to begin to answer this question is to critically examine how we explain the marginal status of these whites. Is it, perhaps, ge- netic? People like Charles Murray and other proponents of the "bell curve" theory of intelligence would argue that poor whites are poor simply because they aren't as smart nor as educable as their genetically well endowed fellow whites. Murray and his ilk are reviving an old strain of thought about race which goes back to the early twentieth century eugenics theory which Nicole Hahn Rafter describes in her White Trash: The Eugenic Family Studies/ More recently, other conservative cultural critics, known collectively as the "Angry White Males," have argued that impoverished whites are in large part the product of mis- 60the minnesota review guided social policies. According to this view, the government programs associated with The War on Poverty have failed the poor, breeding gen- erations of welfare dependent whites. Affirmative Action policies are singled out here as well, as these critics argue that they function as little more than racial quota systems which exclude the white underclass. The end result of these programs and policies, they argue, is a growing class of poor, disenfranchised whites who share a culture of poverty that makes it difficult, if not impossible, for them to enter mainstream American life.

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