4 February 2021
The phrase white trash or poor, white trash is a derogatory Americanism referring to poverty-stricken White people, particularly those in the American South. The phrase originated among Black speakers in the early nineteenth century, but by mid century was being used by Whites as well. But even in the mouths of Whites, the phrase retains the racial distinction.
Use of the plain trash to refer to people of low status is, however, much older. It dates at least to the early seventeenth century, and Shakespeare uses it twice in Othello, both times in the mouth of Iago. At the end of Act 2, Scene 1, when Iago reveals his plan to the audience, he uses trash to refer to Cassio:
And nothing can, or shall content my Soule
Till I am eeuen’d with him, wife for wife.
Or fayling so, yet that I put the Moore,
At least into a Ielouzie so strong
That iudgement cannot cure, Which thing to do,
If this poore Trash of Venice, whom I trace
for his quicke hunting, stand the putting on,
Ile haue our Michael Cassio on the hip,
Abuse him to the Moore, in the right garbe
(For I feare Cassio with my Night-Cape too)
Make the Moore thanke me, loue me, and reward me,
For making him egregiously as Asse,
And practicing vpon his peace and quiet,
Euen to madnesse.
Shakespeare is engaging in wordplay by using both trash and trace in the same line. In Early Modern English both words can mean a cord used to harness or control animals and a verb meaning to control an animal by this means, and the noun trace is still used in this fashion. So Shakespeare is not only calling Cassio trash, but saying he can use him like he would use a dog or draft horse.
In the second instance, in Act 5, Scene 1, Iago uses trash to refer to Bianca, claiming that she had a role in wounding Cassio, when it was he who did it:
Gentlemen all, I do suspect this Trash
To be a party to this Iniurie.
The more specific white trash, however, makes its appearance by 1821, in an account in the Illinois Gazette describing a mixed-race crowd that had gathered upon the apprehension of a runaway slave. The account is given by a White person, but the phrase white trash is quoting a Black woman:
The males said little on the occasion, but some of the other sex gave free scope to their feelings, both against the Marylanders who had him then in their custody, and the whites in general. I happened to be in the vicinity of one who spoke the English language tolerably well, she was at no loss for words, nor sparing in throwing out her aspersive epithets. She had gone a certain distance with the man who was forced away, and on her return accompanied by her son, who stopped almost opposite where I stood, to talk with a white boy nearly his own size. She, the mother, on missing him, turned round, and observing how ill he was paired, like a fury vociferated, with a curse upon her son, why do you lag behind? Come along and do not stand there spending your precious time, in company too, and conversing with White Trash.
On hearing the phrase white trash, as it was altogether new to me when taken in her sense, I seemed as if bitten by a tarantula or stung by a gallinipper. I stood motionless and mum for a short period, but fortunately thinking of Zimmerman on the Prejudices and Pride of Nations. I was in a short time all serenity again, and believed now, that this lady of colour had as good a right and it was as natural for her to say White Trash as it would be for myself or any other of my colour to say Black Trash.
The next year we get poor white trash. From Maine’s Bangor Register of 1 August 1822, a description of a trial of a Black woman for manslaughter. Despite the references to witchcraft, this incident seems to be a rather straightforward assault with a fireplace poker. The race of the victim, Peter Belt, is not mentioned, but it seems probable that he was also a Black person, as the editors would not likely have described a deadly assault on a White person by a Black person as “whimsical.” She was convicted:
Georgetown, D.C. May 4
A very novel and whimsical trial came on in our Circuit Court on Thursday last, Nancy Swann, a lady of color whose mighty powers of witchcraft have made “de black n[——]s, and de poor white trash” tremble, was indicted for practising in and upon one Peter Belt, in the peace of God and the said United States, then and there being feloniously, willfully and of her malice aforethought did make an assault, and that the same Nancy Swann with a certain hot poker which she in her right hand then and there held wilfully [sic], and of her malice aforethought, did push and thrust down the throat of him, the said Peter Belt.
By the 1860s and the Civil War, White people were using the phrase. From the 25 June 1864 diary of John Ransom, a Union prisoner at the Andersonville prison camp in Georgia:
Our guards are composed of the lowest element of the South—poor white trash Very ignorant, much more so than the negro.
Sources:
Bangor Register (Maine), 1 August 1822, 1. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. white trash, n.
The Illinois Gazette (Shawnee-Town, Illinois), 23 June 1821, 1. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2015, s.v. white trash, n. and adj., poor white trash, n. and adj.; second edition, 1989, s.v. trash, n.1., trash, v.1.
Ransom, John L. Andersonville Diary. Auburn, New York: 1881, 71. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Shakespeare, William. Othello. The First Folio, 1623. Oxford, Bodleian Library Arch. G c.7.