Reply to Why is it okay and not considered racist to call someone "white trash"?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Horrible terms.

Slightly OT -- there's a new commercial for DirecTV with "mountain people" that is just so offensive it makes my blood boil.

Needless to say, we would never tolerate, and rightly so, mocking poor, uneducated blacks or Latinos in a nationwide commercial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX6Rhu23yQo[/quote]
That is horrible. I agree, it would never be tolerated if it mocked any other group.[/quote]

I am poor white hillbilly trailer trash, or at least that is what people would call me if they knew where I came from.  These kinds of jokes are pervasive.  Few people even notice because it is so accepted.  I am obviously not a disadvantaged minority, but it stings nevertheless.  [/quote]
Same here, I'm the PP you quoted above. I grew up in West Virginia. Just saying that gives some people that exact image in their mind. Never mind my father was a teacher, all my siblings graduated from college, I have a Ph.D. and I'm a C-level executive. I'm still a "hillbilly" to many based simply on being from Appalachia. I am a white as the driven snow, but really, the WV jokes about incest, bare feet, moonshine, tooth to tattoo ratios and such are very offensive and not the least bit funny. I've heard hillbilly jokes from PC people who would never dream of telling a joke that slammed a person of color.[/quote]

One point: unless the implication is that all white people are "trash" then "PWT" is not racist.

If anything, calling someone from WV PWT or a "hillbilly" is the opposite of racist, as it acknowledges diversity within white culture. You might just as well argue that the depiction of Toofer Spurlock on 30 Rock is racist, because it makes fun of black Harvard graduates.

"White trash" may be a lot of things: mean, insensitive, outdated.[b] But it's not "racist" in any meaningful sense of the world.[/b][/quote]

Incorrect. "Hillbilly" is insensitive. "White trash" is racist.[/quote]

Incorrect. White trash is not racist. Not if racism means anything at all.

"Racism" is defined as: the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

Please explain to me how, exactly, calling a tiny subset of white people in rural areas "white trash" reveals a "belief that all members of [the white] race possess characteristics or abiliities specific to that race" etc...

Look, I get that for whatever P.C. reason people really, really want to see "white trash" as racist, but you've got no case. Try classism. You might get somewhere with that.[/quote]

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