what a fucking weird thing to say in this (or any?) circumstance
this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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Anything to distract the population from the real crux of the issue...
Who the fuck cares? Calling them white trash doesn't fix the gun problem, or the mental health problem, or the class problem in the US.
No, it's true: these parents/perps are genuinely not "white trash."
"White trash" implies that they're poor, uneducated, or otherwise disadvantaged -- in other words, it paints the situation as a class issue and implies that they deserve some non-zero amount of sympathy for the circumstances that led to this.
On the contrary: the killer's parents were middle-class and would be considered "normal," if not for their evil ideology, fucked-up priorities, and anti-social behavior. They deserve no sympathy and no leniency. The kid himself might, as the victim of their abuse, but the parents sure as Hell don't!
Bringing up "white trash" as a talking point (even by denying it, unprovoked) is a misdirection. Don't fall for it!
Lol no it doesn't it means they're trashy people.
Lots of rich white trash out there, too.
Just out of curiosity, what region are you from?
Because where I'm from -- which is only a few dozen miles from Winder, by the way -- calling somebody "white trash" very definitely can have an extra layer of connotation that merely calling them a "trashy person" does not.
Specifically, because of how closely correlated race and class are around here due to all the institutional racism (both historical and ongoing), calling somebody "white trash" doesn't necessarily just mean "trashy," it means --
and please forgive for risking coming across as racist in my attempt to describe other people's racism
-- "living like a black person." The idea is that black people, as an underclass, are trashy by nature, so by invoking a racial comparison the person using the phrase isn't just saying the object of their insult is trashy, but is also "othering" them and contemptuously scolding them for failing to uphold the class standard racists expect of them as a white person.
And yes, that applies to "rich white trash," too: when a racist's worldview is that even the richest black person is inherently inferior to even the poorest white person, to call a person "white trash" is to consign them to the lowest class of society no matter how rich they are.
Also, please note that I'm not saying that everybody who uses the phrase "which trash" is a racist! The connotation I'm describing is highly context-dependent. In other words, just because some shitty kinfolk of a murderer in Georgia are highly offended at being accused of being associated with blackness because they were called "white trash" by randos from elsewhere in the country, doesn't mean said randos actually meant it that way.
Nevertheless, regardless of what some people mean and how other people interpret them, the bottom line is that using that phrase in this context injects race and class issues into the matter that don't deserve to be there and do nothing but distract from any legitimate goal anyone here might have, whether that be throwing the book at murderous fuckwits, reforming gun laws, trying to fix the root causes of domestic abuse and school bullying, or otherwise.
I don't know where you're from, but I have only ever heard somebody use the phrase "white trash" to refer to lower income white people, usually who behave in a trashy manner but not always (wherein a trashy manner means things like wearing wife beaters or raggy clothing, men walking around without shirts on, living in a trailer park--though that alone doesn't necessarily make you white trash, being undereducated and poorly spoken, being bigoted and outspoken, likely being on drugs or drinking too much, or living on disability payments while not being disabled and still hating "welfare" for others, having a criminal record--penchant for fighting, drunk driving, theft, drug dealing, etc, etc).
And it's very much a racist term because it's implying that regular "trash" is not white.
I'd heard nobody say it until now, so now I'm definitely thinking it.
A former neighbor and landlord of the Grays told The Post the teenager came from a neglectful home that, according to police, was frequently visited by the state’s child protective services agency.
The alleged school shooter’s mother, Marcee Gray, who has a lengthy rap sheet with drug and domestic violence busts, is a bit of a black sheep on her side of the family, the relative explained.
Unlike the rest of her kin, she got into the wrong crowd, dated some bad guys and often got into trouble, the family member said.
Lauren Vickers, who lived next door to the Grays in Jefferson, Ga., told The Post the children were always wearing dirty clothes and sometimes were hungry.
This is practically the definition of white trash.
Just because part of the family isn't trashy doesn't mean that this particular family unit isn't.
To be fair, in many, many places "white trash" people are the "regular people".
Looking at you, my family from Kentucky who thought it was totally okay and not-weird to have us visit them for a week with no functional toilet.
Edit: They also thought that me being a vegetarian meant that all I could eat is plants. So they bought two bunches of bananas for me. And that's it. I don't even like bananas.