It's OK to Bash 'White Trash', But Not Any Other Race

[Annie]

Now I'm not one to go here very often, I find these topics offensive and anti-American-not being PC, it's just that hate and ignoring 'All men are created equal' are just un-American, IMHO.

However, I've been reading reviews of this book, which I've ordered. The following doesn't hit the humor that some of the reviews I've read seem to indicate. If it's on drag queen memoirs, I'm going to be very disappointed. However, the point of the post was on the term and acceptance in use of 'White trash:


[ame]http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670034665/102-8254818-4714542?n=283155[/ame]

Self-Made Man : One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back (Hardcover)
by Norah Vincent

From Publishers Weekly
The disguise that former Los Angeles Times op-ed columnist Vincent employed to trick dozens of people into believing her a man was carefully thought out: a new, shorter haircut; a pair of rectangular eyeglasses; a fake five o'clock shadow; a prosthetic penis; some preppy clothes. It was more than she needed. "[A]s I became more confident in my disguise... the props I had used... became less and less important, until sometimes I didn't need them at all," Vincent writes. Gender marking, she found, is more about attitude than appearance. Vincent's account of the year and a half she spent posing as a man is peppered with such predictable observations. To readers of gender studies literature, none of them will be especially illuminating, but Vincent's descriptions of how she learned, and tested, such chestnuts firsthand make them awfully fun to read. As "Ned," Vincent joined an all-male bowling league, dated women, worked for a door-to-door sales force, spent three weeks in a monastery, hung out in strip clubs and, most dangerous of all, went on a Robert Bly–style men's retreat. She creates rich portraits of the men she met in these places and the ways they behaved—as a lesbian, she's particularly good at separating the issues of sexuality from those of gender. But the most fascinating part of the story lies within Vincent herself—and the way that censoring her emotions to pass as a man provoked a psychological breakdown. For fans of Nickel and Dimed–style immersion reporting, this book is a sure bet. (Jan. 23)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

and found the term 'white trash' in a NYTimes review. Seems others have picked up on it too:

http://eddriscoll.com/archives/007301.php

Why Is "White Trash" An Acceptable Phrase In PC America?
By Ed Driscoll · June 30, 2005 05:23 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media!

When I was Googling for articles on Brian Williams, I came across this piece from the April 2005 Philadelphia magazine, a slick, glossy magazine whose advertising (and there's lots of it) and articles serve as a guide to shopping and dining in the City of Brotherly Love. Here's its opening paragraph:

Arby's! NASCAR! South Jersey! It's a white-trash bonanza this month as we chat with anchorman Brian Williams, who covered the Garden State for WCAU-TV (Channel 10) in the '80s before going network and succeeding Tom Brokaw in the NBC Nightly News chair.

If I wrote a piece that began "Ribs! Rap music! It's a black-trash bonanza this month...", whoever my editor was would strike out that phrase so fast it would make your head spin--and either give me a serious dressing down or never hire me again.

And quite rightly so.

But as Larry Elder wrote in 2000, "white trash" remains a perfectly acceptable phrase in America's PC-obsessed media:

We live in an era where radio talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger catches fire for calling homosexuals "biological errors."

Schlessinger apologized, but protesters remain unappeased. On the NBC program "Will & Grace," critics attacked the show when a character referred to her Salvadoran maid as a "hot tamale." In response, the network dubbed in a less offensive expression. We call illegal aliens "undocumented workers." We call blacks "African-Americans." Fine.

But why, then, is it perfectly OK in polite company to call to low-income, often southern-dwelling people "white trash"?

Take the President Bill Clinton-Paula Jones scandal. Is there a greater example of the harsh treatment and media pile-on against so-called "white trash"? Recall that Jones, then an Arkansas state employee, claimed then governor Bill Clinton groped her and solicited sex.

* * *

As for Jones? Remember Clinton defender James Carville's famous line, "Drag $100 through a trailer park and there's no telling what you'll find."

In today's era of racial sensitivity, safe targets like white trash remain. Former California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown once called political opponents "white boys." Al Gore's campaign manager, Donna Brazile, referred to the GOP as the "party of the white boys."

Comedian Jeff Foxworthy makes a good living by poking fun at "rednecks."

But Foxworthy, himself a Southerner, calls his humor respectfully self-deprecating, rather than insulting or dismissive. But apparently anybody can ridicule low-income, uneducated whites by branding them "white trash." Could someone like Bill Maher go on national television and suggest that only "black trash" or "Latino trash" appear on such programs?

What's the point? When a guest or host appears on a show like "Politically Incorrect" and derides a category of people by race, that's entertainment.

But were the host to blanketly ridicule low-income minorities, that's hate speech. Indeed, many colleges have passed "speech codes," outlawing insensitive or demeaning language directed towards racial or ethnic groups.

Try it. Substitute "black trash" for "white trash." After all, a disproportionate number of blacks appear on these tabloid shows. Frankly, by not calling black guests "black trash," aren't we suggesting blacks who appear on "Springer" represent mainstream black America? Now that's insulting.

Picking on, demeaning, and ridiculing whites is OK. But by demeaning any group by race, we open the door and grant permission to demean others.

Bottom line, either race-based insults are offensive or they're not.

Pick one.

The irony in Philadelphia's case is that the magazine makes a great deal of its revenue--both from advertising and from purchases of individual issues--from South Jersey suburban readers looking for a guide to the big city on the other side of the Delaware.

I purchased it for years when I lived in South Jersey myself. Of course back then, I had no idea how condescending its publishers were to those of us unfortunates in the hinterlands.