poor white trash
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]First attested in 1835.
Noun
[edit]poor white trash (uncountable)
- (US, obsolete, ethnic slur, used by black slaves) White person or people employed in a servile position, for example, as a butler.
- Synonym: mean white
- [1835 May 30, The London Literary Gazette; and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c.of the collected Literary Gazette […] for the year 1835[1], number 958, London, page 338:
- In the south, there are no servants but blacks; for the greater proportion of domestics being slaves all species of servitude whatever is looked upon as a degradation; and the slaves themselves entertain the very highest contempt for white servants, whom they designate as ‘poor white trash’.]
- 1936 June 30, Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, →OCLC; republished New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, 1944, →OCLC, part I, page 17:
- “Huccome po’ w’ite trash buy any niggers? Dey ain’ never owned mo’n fo’ at de mostes’.”
- (US, modern, derogatory, ethnic slur) White trash; poor, uneducated white person or people of low social status.
- 1991, Ted Tally, The Silence of the Lambs (motion picture), spoken by Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins):
- Good nutrition's given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling?