It's amazing to me that someone can type something like this and no one bats an eye. Imagine stereotyping any other class of a people as "trash" and it being wholly acceptable.
I count myself in that group. I have no interest in turning this into any sort of argument about which group gets to be the martyrs because other people can or can't call them names they don't like at certain points in history. Monkeys gang up on other monkeys all the time, it's part of what they do, but it's not really interesting to play on either side of that game.
People call them/us that. It was meant to identify that group of people. That was the least interesting part of the whole comment. Let's talk about any of the other parts.
I refer to my own background as "poor white trash". It is accurate and descriptive, not offensive. This doesn't stop people, invariably not from that sociocultural milieu, from getting offended on my behalf when I use that term to describe myself.
The pejorative use is assertion of class determinism i.e. "you can take the boy out of the trailer park but you can't take the trailer park out of the boy". That's actually offensive, but I didn't see that here.
With that in mind, please allow me to also be descriptive, of how things were in the Tidewater South, 40-60 years ago. I am going to write about class, and race, which the south of my time admitted[1] existed as social constructs. I hope you all appreciate that I am attempting to keep in mind EWD's "How do we tell truths that might hurt?" as well as Dr. Mike's "Regret, by definition, comes too late / Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate."
"Poor white" was ethnic, but not a slur. It was in fact a positive term. Poor whites were good people, who happened to not be part of one's social group because they lacked the means. Poor whites were no longer poor whites if they came into money. (I suspect JAR's family would have been poor whites under this system, not "poor white trash")
"White trash" was ethnic, and a slur, but not an ethnic slur. White trash was no better than they should have been. They were not part of one's social group because even if they had means, they lacked manners and education. Trash could easily be richer[2] than the people in one's own circle. White trash was not an ethnic slur because although they couldn't change the 'white' part, they could always change the 'trash': not everyone could afford an education, but anyone can have manners[3]. Trash who got their shit together[4] could eventually become unmarked, but because of the positive nature of "poor white" were unlikely to become the latter, even if they lacked money.
In the time and place I experienced, "poor white trash" would have been an oxymoron[5].
Now I move from factual description (not prescription) to hypothetical, attempting to apply this construct to events of our times.
What was important to white trash of the time is that even though they were on the lowest rung of the social scale, they were still "free, white, and 21" meaning that a separate social scale existed below them. If one removes 'white' from the equation, then white trash would be just trash[6]. I note that Minneapolis is well north of the Mason-Dixon line. Cops are not well paid in the US, meaning they are unlikely to be drawn from educated social classes[7]. However, even though they are in a society where respect is deeply tied to salary, they do still have people beneath them: "thugs".
[1] Marivanna asks class to name word starting with letter 'A'. Vovochka quickly raises hand, calling out "ass!" Marivanna sternly tells him "for shame, there's no such word!" Vovochka feels back pockets, thinking how odd it is that everyone has one, yet it does not have name.
[2] compare Dolphus Raymond, who uses this to his advantage. His town would not accept a rich n%%%%%-l%%%% (in modern terms, a w%%%%%?), but they would accept a trash alcoholic whose failure to segregate could be expected. If you haven't read "To Kill a Mockingbird", Calpurnia's advice on code-switching is an interesting excerpt.
[3] "my mama always said stupid is as stupid does" Not everyone sacrifices as much for their childrens' education as Mrs. Gump.
[4] and put it in a backpack.
[5] note that Dolly doesn't refer to herself as "poor white trash". She is proud to be "white trash" because she is not now, nor ever has been, a sorority bow head.
[6] See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23592167 on "sin eaters." My wife watches talent shows from the States, and asks me "why do americans always have to be proud? they're always saying 'I'm proud of you'", for which I have no good answer beyond culture. Taking away someone's pride and expecting them to listen reflectively to what one has to say is unlikely to be effective.
[7] as to manners: cops here are respectful, and view their primary focus as education, not enforcement. I see that traffic cops in the RF (as they did in the USSR) even salute the people they pull over, which (if it means anything beyond hoping for cabbage) is a nice gesture. One of my favourite russian memes is a traffic cop in a Santa outfit, with the caption being "Not only do you have to pay the ticket, but you'll have to recite a poem as well."
https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/hundley/hundley.html#hund2...
The author was more erudite than the current 140-character expounders of his beliefs, but these beliefs haven't altered much over the generations: poor people come from poor stock, our poor are better off than europe's poor, cities are the root of unrest, if you let people go after slavers they will go after capitalists next (massachusetts being the home of socialists and communists), etc.
If Hundley was distasteful, Isenberg has more modern sensibilities: https://bookclubbabble.com/white-trash-vs-the-american-dream...
(To tie back to more usual HN'ish fare: the textile mills mentioned in the comment on that page were outcompeting the textile mills in Boston due to nonunion labour. Eventually the loss of the textile industry to the south would provide cheap office space for DEC.)
Edit: removed the way to distinguish between them. You all were correct, I should be more charitable.
Thanks for enlarging my country horizons. What do you think of Hank3? (Hank Jr's "cold cold ground" I like, but otherwise I prefer the other two Hanks)
He never said that all southerners are like that.
More generally, those that are poor and/or unemployed can be stirred up using a scapegoat. Speaking from personal experience, working class Brits have blindly followed the claim that EU immigration was the cause of all employment problems when the recession was really to blame. This was of course the result of what the government of the day claimed and partly why Brexit is a thing. These attitudes were present long before Brexit was a thing, Brexit just so happens to be the result (so far).
Moving back in time further, there was great animosity between native inhabitants of Bristol (the same place that threw a statue in a harbour) and Welsh migrants to moved there for work post-WW2. Again, the perception was that the Bristol jobs were being taken by those that had no right to them. Now, no one looks twice if you drive an hour across the border.
Rascism in America has deep roots, so obviously the issue is much more complex and can't be explained this simply. Nonetheless, it's not hard to manipulate people against others that have look different, have different values, a different background or a different religion. It's just playing on ignorance. These days, American politicians focus anger on Mexicans and Muslims, but it's the same story playing out as before.
And other politicians focus anger on people who have concerns about, for example, the effect of immigration on the economy at the micro level.
All of this is as you say: playing on ignorance. But I disagree that it's just that (although I doubt you intended strong emphasis on that word)...what's actually going on is a whole bunch of things, some of which humanity and science has knowledge of (but largely ignores, depending on the topic of conversation, for complicated reasons), and a whole bunch of other stuff that we do not have knowledge of.
In an abstract conversation, most everyone can agree that we have very little understanding of how humans work, but when the discussion is of a specific, object level idea, we seem to lose access to that abstract knowledge.
Calling people trash depersonalizes and insults them. Next thing you know someone will be talking about "taking out the trash" or "burning the trash", something Nazis are well know for. Calling people trash is a step in a wrong direction.
You can't communicate with someone if you won't accept them as equal on some plane, be it political, legal, social, intellectual or other. You cannot convince them to change unless you can engage them. If you do not believe they are worthy of engagement then I think you have serious problems or are living in the wrong place.
But, of course, it's easier to hate.