Learn English – the early recorded use of “white trash” and has its meaning changed over time

american-englishetymology

I am reading The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, written in 1885, and came across a passage describing poor white Southerners who had no property or slaves but who were nevertheless coerced or cajoled into supporting the rebellion as white trash.

The great bulk of the legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre—what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation. Under the old régime they were looked down upon by those who controlled all the affairs in the interest of slave-owners, as poor white trash who were allowed the ballot so long as they cast it according to direction.

I had assumed the term white trash was a more modern idiom. I am curious, when did the term originate and has the meaning changed over time?

Best Answer

Personally, I've never heard "white trash". The text you quoted was by Grant, who lived in the 19th century. "White trash" came about in the 1830s:

The term white trash first came into common use in the 1830s as a pejorative used by house slaves against poor whites. In 1833 Fanny Kemble, an English actress visiting Georgia, noted in her journal: "The slaves themselves entertain the very highest contempt for white servants, whom they designate as 'poor white trash'"

...By 1855 the term had passed into common usage by upper class whites, and was common usage among all Southerners, regardless of race, throughout the rest of the 19th century.

And surprisingly, it seems to have retain most of its origin, although it is now sometimes used jokingly:

as in the humorous book The White Trash Mom Handbook: Embrace Your Inner Trailerpark, Forget Perfection, Resist Assimilation into the PTA, Stay Sane, and Keep Your Sense of Humor by Michelle Lamar and Molly Wendland (2008).

But mostly its still used to mean poverty:

Autobiographies sometimes mention white trash origins. Author Amber L. Hollibaugh says, "I grew up a mixed-race, white-trash girl in a country that considered me dangerous, corrupt, fascinating, exotic."

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