A term developed by African slaves
in the early nineteenth century to describe the poor, landless whites with whom they dwelt in the South. According to historian Eugene Genovese, author of Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made, slaves developed the term as a way of looking down at poor whites, who lived in abject economic poverty, often in worse conditions than those inhabited by the slaves themselves. Although the poor whites were not considered property like the slaves, the slaves chose to view the so-called "white trash" as inferior to themselves, and members of a social echelon lower than the one they occupied themselves. (Genovese, 20-30; 58) This information does not necessarily change the the
contemporary Urban Dictionary definition of the term, but it does change the term's origins and etemology. Rather than being a term made by the middle and upper class whites to define even the poor of their race as better than all non-whites, "white trash" was a term developed by poor non-whites, Afro-American slaves to contemptuously distance themselves from poor whites, whose social station they believed was even worse than their own.
Tom (a white male) : Look at those poor
white people standing in line at the
unemployment office, that should be proof enough that not all
white people are wealthy.
John (a black male) : Indeed. They are what my great great grandmother would call White trash. I don't agree with the term myself; I'm just telling you what she would have said.
