What is White Trash?
And that comment made me think does America really know what white trash is or do they just have an idea of what they think white trash is? Are you white trash if you live in a trailer? Are you white trash because you use your home and lawn area as say an auto body shop? What is white trash really?
The first thing I thought of though as I watched the news was, ‘I’m sure if I looked hard enough I could find ‘white trash‘ in Seattle’. Living in Florida for the past 15 years has opened my eye’s to the world America see’s as white trash. Children having babies, motors hanging in tree’s, car’s dead on lawns for 5+ years, school kids still using racial terms towards others to start fights, women having children by several different men. But I also grew up in New Hampshire and even in New Hampshire this world exists, maybe not to the extent that Florida has it, but it’s still there. Except in New Hampshire the term I’ve normally heard is ‘Country Bumpkins’.
The point is though that America looks at the south and based on certain stereotypes they seem to assume everyone is a toothless looser who beat their wives, punch the kids and kick the dog on a daily basis while listening to country music and watching Rassling on tv. This isn’t a representation of everyone from the south. To be honest mobile homes are affordable housing, and sometimes they are out of even a lower income person’s range. The normal trailer here in Florida starts at around $20,000 which is about the price of the houses I have seen in certain parts of Niagara Falls, New York. Trailer living also doesn’t consist heavily of people who are poor or women who have been married and divorced 7 times, they consist of everyday people who go to work everyday just like you and me and some of those people hold high level jobs.
And what is wrong with NASCAR coming to Seattle? You should see what kind of money it pumps back into the economy here in Central Florida. Living only 25 miles from the speedway does have it’s headaches as far as traffic goes, but that’s a one day a year problem I can live with. I don’t even go that way for work anyways! People spend good money camping, RVing, and buying hotel rooms from Daytona to Fort Lauderdale to Tampa to Jacksonville and beyond. The monetary figures are amazing. Hey, I don’t like NASCAR at all but I’m not complaining, it would have been Seattle’s loss if they nixed the idea.
Maybe it was when my husband and I went to Georgia last year with a friend of his who wanted to move there, we drove down several street’s looking at trailers. Some looked better then trailers here in Florida and some were a little rough on the outside but very nice on the inside. One thing though that they had in common was that the people who lived in the surrounding trailers were normal looking. Not what people see as trashy, no motor’s all over the place, noone running around in a yard with 15 cars on cinder blocks in it. Just normal everyday people who drove nice cars and kept their little piece of heaven nice and trimmed.
Just because you live in Washington or anywhere else for that matter doesn’t mean you don’t have trashy people living in your state, they probably just don’t live in Seattle but then again they might. Living in a trailer in the south gets painted bad by people and for the most part the media. I hope the ‘white trash’ came out of the wood work after that news piece. For most it might conjure up images of trailer park fights or a bad episode of COPS.
Hopefully people will wake up and realize not everyone they see living below what they would consider normal is trash. Some of my closest friends live in mobile homes and I can say they are far from being white trash. It’s a sad misconception people have of people, especially people in the south.
And by the way those bumpkins up north took a chance on a race track along with California and I’m sure the figures for those areas look great after races too.
