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raybearI'm so over the phrase "white trash". On the annoyance scale, I rate it slightly below "ghetto" and "fat" (as a general pejorative or as an adjective for anything annoying or ugly), but above "cross-dresser".
I mean, sure, plenty of people use this phrase who come from working class white backgrounds and might be using it in a reclamatory way. But I'm not sure it's really working at all, especially since I think many of the times when people are supposedly reclaiming, they are more likely admitting or confessing they are white trash, thereby supporting the idea that it's something of which to be accused or ashamed.
I'm not denying cultural or regional differences between rural and urban, suburban and trailer park, southern and midwestern, etc. etc. That would be ignorant and reductionist of me. I'm also not saying one can never point out or illuminate or discuss these differences. I just wish at some point in our culture we were taught how to do this with respect and honesty and sans judgment.
I wish that along with the quadratic equation and dissecting frogs and the names of the thirteen colonies and other things taught nearly every year throughout school, there would be some mandatory classes on communication and ways of speaking and people would actually maybe realize that language has power, and class and race and sex and other categories have power and combining the two (or three or four) has real manifested effects on individuals as well as society. I wish people would be able to stand outside of themselves more often and say "hey, that probably came out badly to someone who's not inside my head." I wish that for thirty goddamned seconds people would imagine how they might feel if they were living in someone else's shoes and shape all of their speech around the realizations that would come from that.
It all sounds so simple and hunky dory when written out in this fashion. Or I just realize how everyone suffers from debilitating forms of tunnel vision when it comes to life. Half the world are intentional bastards and the other half seem to be unwitting assholes.
I feel very sad for people.
I mean, sure, plenty of people use this phrase who come from working class white backgrounds and might be using it in a reclamatory way. But I'm not sure it's really working at all, especially since I think many of the times when people are supposedly reclaiming, they are more likely admitting or confessing they are white trash, thereby supporting the idea that it's something of which to be accused or ashamed.
I'm not denying cultural or regional differences between rural and urban, suburban and trailer park, southern and midwestern, etc. etc. That would be ignorant and reductionist of me. I'm also not saying one can never point out or illuminate or discuss these differences. I just wish at some point in our culture we were taught how to do this with respect and honesty and sans judgment.
I wish that along with the quadratic equation and dissecting frogs and the names of the thirteen colonies and other things taught nearly every year throughout school, there would be some mandatory classes on communication and ways of speaking and people would actually maybe realize that language has power, and class and race and sex and other categories have power and combining the two (or three or four) has real manifested effects on individuals as well as society. I wish people would be able to stand outside of themselves more often and say "hey, that probably came out badly to someone who's not inside my head." I wish that for thirty goddamned seconds people would imagine how they might feel if they were living in someone else's shoes and shape all of their speech around the realizations that would come from that.
It all sounds so simple and hunky dory when written out in this fashion. Or I just realize how everyone suffers from debilitating forms of tunnel vision when it comes to life. Half the world are intentional bastards and the other half seem to be unwitting assholes.
I feel very sad for people.
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just don't say trailer fabulous.
Date: 2002-12-05 05:37 pm (UTC)they are more likely admitting or confessing they are white trash, thereby supporting the idea that it's something of which to be accused or ashamed.
okay, this resonated a lot with me. a lot. i had this really weird moment at 8 Mile of all places where i sort of. remembered. i think part of it is that M was so young for a lot of that part of our lives that it's not a thing he and i talk about much, so it's like this weird almost-false childhood that only existed in my head. at the same time, i know that so much of my drive and ambition come from the fact that i have no safety net and never have, and that my ideas of what would qualify as one are kind of in constant battle with my social ethics.
i remember, when brett said something about being "obnoxiously queer," i remember thinking, why isn't anyone obnoxiously poor? which is not to say that people aren't, that in some way it's not what labor unions were originally, or what rap gave voice to. but my family wasn't black or "working-class" -- they were just really fucking broke for a very long time. they were also educated and valued my access to that above almost everything else. but all that really meant was that i learned to pass for middle-class before i learned how to fake any of the other things, if i wanted. and now that i basically AM middle-class, at least in the most present sense of the word, because i still have no safety net, i don't know how to talk about growing up in a trailer that doesn't include a joke about being "white trash."
i wish you were here NOW.