Jessica Fox's definitions

chav

Romany word meaning "little child". Recently misappropriated by the mainstream media and used as a slur against British working class culture, while at the same time denigrating it's language of origin. To be called a chav is to be a scapegoat and effectively a "white nigger".

In many ways, both chavs and US trailer trash are 'not-quite-white', in the sense that they are seen as thieving, violent, promiscuous and thoroughly unrespectable: the very tropes that historically have been applied to Irish, Asian and Black immigrants in Europe and America.

by Jessica Fox July 25, 2008