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You know the old saying about what happens when you assume, right?
If not, Google it.
It’s too cheesy to repeat in what I hope to be an otherwise deep set of reflections, but it’s true. And I was reminded of it after receiving an e-mail recently about something I’d said regarding Trump supporters.
Although the message was from someone who agreed with me politically, he then ventured into a familiar and all-too-predictable territory, which is no less disturbing for its frequency.
Namely, he said that there’s “no fixing white trash,” the likes of which stormed the Capitol and come to Trump rallies because they’re “too stupid to know what they don’t know.”
As he explained it, they’re “uneducated and backward,” incapable of being brought to the light of reason.
It was territory in which he presupposed I would be comfortable dwelling — thus, revealing the truth of the above-mentioned maxim about assuming things.
While I agree there may not be any fixing them — and I surely don’t think trying to do so is a worthwhile expenditure of progressive energy — it was the use of that term, “white trash,” which spoke volumes.
It’s relatively rare that I hear Black folks or other people of color deploying this term, and indeed, the sender in this instance was white.
In fact, he made a point of it, which is highly relevant to the story — a subject to which I’ll return.
I think there’s a reason Black and brown folks are slower to use such a slur.
First, because it’s an insult aimed at the poor and working-class — and Black and brown folks know what it’s like to be stereotyped on that basis, as well as racially — but also, I suspect, for another reason.
Namely, when you say “white trash,” you aren’t just insulting a particular class of white people on the basis of their economic status. You are also using a term that, ironically, reinforces notions of…
