Poor White
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Take 4 parts blues add 2 parts country and give it to a poor white boy and you have rock."--Duane Allman "Sarah Shepard looked upon what she called Hugh's laziness as a thing of the spirit. “You have got to get over it,” she declared. “Look at your own people--poor white trash--how lazy and shiftless they are. You can't be like them. It's a sin to be so dreamy and worthless.”"--Poor White (1920) by Sherwood Anderson |
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In the United States, Poor White (or Poor Whites of the South for clarity) is the historical classification for an American sociocultural group, of generally Western and/or Northern European descent, with origins in the Southern United States and in Appalachia. They first were classified as a social caste consisting of white, agrarian, economically disadvantaged laborers or squatters, who usually owned neither land nor slaves.
In certain contemporary contexts the term is still used to pertain to their descendants; regardless of present economic status. While similar to other White Americans in ancestry, the Poor Whites differ notably in regard to their history and culture.
See also
- Culture of the Southern United States
- Hillbilly
- Redleg
- Country (identity)
- Social and economic stratification in Appalachia
- Plain Folk of the Old South
- White trash
- Poor Whites in South Africa
- Poor White (novel)
