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At User:Beyond My Ken's suggestion, I'm making some suggestions for fixes here. There is lots of unfounded, outdated or unsourced information on this page, so I made a bold edit. My edits were reverted with minimal explanation (e.g., without saying which parts were problematic), so I am opening a discussion here for editors to get involved in so we can move forward with this.
Stylistically, this article also reads like a personal essay, rather than an encyclopedia entry, with lots of editorialising, comment and hyperbole. Some of these are matters of taste, but where they stray into POV, weasel words and peacock prose, I think they need to be addressed as well.
I believe that the existing article is of poor quality and has some serious problems which have to be addressed. We should avoid ownership attitudes when trying to come to a new consensus, and revert only when needed (WP:ROWN).
For example, the first paragraph in the history section is quite long but only has a single (quite old) source for some quite contentious information. It implies a large number of children were tricked into indentured servitude in the Americas, when more recent scholarship suggests most children transported in this way were sponsored by family members to come work on their land. Just because a single source makes such a claim, if doesn't mean it's noteworthy or should be given equal weight to other info.
Scholarship also indicates that the number of indentured workers at any one point was less than the overall number of people who were free wage labourers and ex-indentured servants at any one time (except for a few notable exceptions). The Wikipedia page Indentured servitude in British America confirms most of this and is at odds with this section, which feels like ira paraphrasing a single author's view. Lewisguile ( talk) 09:26, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
Lewisguile ( talk) 19:16, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
The article claims 'The Virginia Company also imported boatloads of poor women to be sold as brides.' This is misleading. The women were transpored to America, but they weren't "sold". The men paid for their transport but they were incentivised with land, inheritance and the right to choose their own husbands.
The Atlantic confirms, 'Although the financially strapped Virginia Company was eager to recoup the costs of sponsoring the Jamestown brides, it was not selling women.'
History.com also agrees: https://www.history.com/news/jamestown-colony-women-brides-program
Wikipedia already has a page outlining what the tobacco brides were, so this part of the article should be aligned with that page.
Suggestion: reword or add context.
Lewisguile ( talk) 09:54, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
Quotes are often used selectively in this article, and often omit important context that works against the article’s presumed “thesis”. The arguments presented by scholars and critics are only partially referred to.
For example, Leah Donnella argues that “white trash” is also offensive to people of colour because a) it implies that those other people are inherently “trash” so don’t need a racial qualifier, and b) the tropes used to portray “white trash” as “bad poor” are the same tropes used to stereotype people of colour.
In her discussion with Wray, she also points out that “white trash” implies poor whites are “not quite white”. Source: https://www.npr.org/2018/07/30/633891473/why-its-time-to-retire-the-disparaging-term-white-trash
The following was also removed:
'Sociologist Matt Wray also claims that the term is used to perpetuate the long-held belief that poor whites are more racist than wealthier whites. This helps affluent whites to avoid criticism as racists while characterising poor whites as the embodiment of "real" prejudice. Wray states:
“Whites who use the term are saying, ‘Look, I’m not racist. The person down the road is racist. The one who drops the N-word, or has the Confederate flag flapping off the back of their truck. That’s real racism.’"' (Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/08/01/605084163/why-its-still-ok-to-trash-poor-white-people)
This is important context for why "white trash" is racist and covers a crucial part of the modern stereotype of "white trash" as more racist than other people.
Lewisguile ( talk) 10:02, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
This one is more subjective, but I'm leaving it here for completeness' sake. Some of the text uses weasel words and peacock prose, which we can mark in-line for now. More general issues are covered below.
Firstly, the prose is often very verbose and archaic. Consider this sentence:
'In the popular imagination of the mid-19th century, "poor white trash" were a "curious" breed of degenerate, gaunt and, haggard people who suffered from numerous physical and social defects. They were dirty, callow, ragged, cadaverous, leathery, and emaciated, and had feeble children with distended abdomens who were wrinkled and withered and looked aged beyond their physical years, so that even 10-year-olds' "countenances are stupid and heavy and they often become dropsical and loathsome to sight," according to a New Hampshire schoolteacher. The skin of a poor white Southerner had a "ghastly yellowish-white" tinge to it, like "yellow parchment", and was waxy looking;, or they were so white they almost appeared to be albinos. The parents were listless and slothful, did not properly care for their children, and were addicted to alcohol. They were looked on with contempt by both upper-class planters and yeoman – the non-slave-owning smallholders.'
All of these descriptors aren't needed. Gaunt, haggard, cadaverous, emaciated all mean roughly the same thing (=they look thin and deathly). We don't need all of them. You could summarise it as saying they suffer from "numerous physical and social defects" or you could just trim down the examples so they're not long lists of adjectives. Similarly, wrinkled, withered, aged beyond their physical years (=they look old).
This occurs throughout the article. Lewisguile ( talk) 10:50, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
This is one paragraph:
'In the mid-19th century South, even upper-class parents were extremely indulgent of their children, encouraging both boys and girls to be aggressive, even ferocious. They soon learned that they were expected to grab for what they wanted, wrestle with their siblings in front of their parents, disobey parental orders, make a racket with their toys, and physically attack visitors. Patrician girls would later be taught to be proper young ladies, but boys continued to be unrestrained, lest they become effeminate. These behaviors – which were also practiced by poorer whites to the extent their circumstances allowed – propelled young men into gambling, drinking, whoring and fighting, which "manly" behavior was more or less expected – but which their mothers carefully did not allow themselves to be aware of – and which was certainly preferred to effeminacy. This pattern of child-rearing was predominate in the backwoods, where it was not limited to the upper class, but could be found among yeoman and poor whites alike. For white trash, given this method of raising children, combined with violent folkways inherited from their English, Irish, and Scottish progenitors, it is not unremarkable that their culture should have been a violent one.'
As well as featuring a number of archaic words ("lest", "whoring"), it also displays editorialising and a clear POV (we describe children as "even ferocious", mothers "carefully" don't pay attention, presumed violence is clearly deemed "unremarkable"). If a reliable source has argued that these "violent folkways" were inherited from British and Irish progenitors, for example, then we should quote that source, instead of saying it in Wikipedia's voice. Lewisguile ( talk) 11:00, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
The opening paragraph of the history section is:
'Beginning in the early 17th century, the City of London shipped their unwanted excess population, including vagrant children, to the American colonies – especially the Colony of Virginia, the Province of Maryland, and the Province of Pennsylvania – where they became not apprentices, as the children had been told, but indentured servants, working particularly in the fields, especially in Maryland and Tidewater Virginia. Even before the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade brought Africans to the British colonies in 1619, this influx of "transported" English, Welsh, Scots, and Irish was a crucial part of the American workforce. The Virginia Company also imported boatloads of poor women to be sold as brides. The numbers of these all-but-slaves was significant: by the middle of the 17th century, at a time when the population of Virginia was 11,000, only 300 were Africans, who were outnumbered by English, Irish and Scots indentured servants. In New England, one-fifth of the Puritans were indentured servants. More indentured servants were sent to the colonies as a result of insurrections in Ireland. Oliver Cromwell sent hundreds of Irish Catholics to British North America during the Irish Confederate Wars (1641–1653).'
This paragraph only has a single reference and yet there are numerous claims, presented as fact, which conflict with the material at Indentured servitude in British America.
Lewisguile ( talk) 11:22, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
Apart from the issues above, I think one thing that needs to be considered about this article is its scope. It starts out about a "derogatory racial and classist slur", but expands to include an over-sized and detailed history of poor, white, southern Americans. Is this the purpose of the article? Is this not content that should be in a more suitable article, rather than as part of an article about a slur? Is this content not already elsewhere in Wikipedia? Do the sources for all this even include the phrase? There is a distinct hint of WP:COATRACK about it all. Escape Orbit (Talk) 11:20, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
White trash article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives:
1,
2,
3,
4Auto-archiving period: 180 days
![]() |
![]() | This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future:
|
At User:Beyond My Ken's suggestion, I'm making some suggestions for fixes here. There is lots of unfounded, outdated or unsourced information on this page, so I made a bold edit. My edits were reverted with minimal explanation (e.g., without saying which parts were problematic), so I am opening a discussion here for editors to get involved in so we can move forward with this.
Stylistically, this article also reads like a personal essay, rather than an encyclopedia entry, with lots of editorialising, comment and hyperbole. Some of these are matters of taste, but where they stray into POV, weasel words and peacock prose, I think they need to be addressed as well.
I believe that the existing article is of poor quality and has some serious problems which have to be addressed. We should avoid ownership attitudes when trying to come to a new consensus, and revert only when needed (WP:ROWN).
For example, the first paragraph in the history section is quite long but only has a single (quite old) source for some quite contentious information. It implies a large number of children were tricked into indentured servitude in the Americas, when more recent scholarship suggests most children transported in this way were sponsored by family members to come work on their land. Just because a single source makes such a claim, if doesn't mean it's noteworthy or should be given equal weight to other info.
Scholarship also indicates that the number of indentured workers at any one point was less than the overall number of people who were free wage labourers and ex-indentured servants at any one time (except for a few notable exceptions). The Wikipedia page Indentured servitude in British America confirms most of this and is at odds with this section, which feels like ira paraphrasing a single author's view. Lewisguile ( talk) 09:26, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
Lewisguile ( talk) 19:16, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
The article claims 'The Virginia Company also imported boatloads of poor women to be sold as brides.' This is misleading. The women were transpored to America, but they weren't "sold". The men paid for their transport but they were incentivised with land, inheritance and the right to choose their own husbands.
The Atlantic confirms, 'Although the financially strapped Virginia Company was eager to recoup the costs of sponsoring the Jamestown brides, it was not selling women.'
History.com also agrees: https://www.history.com/news/jamestown-colony-women-brides-program
Wikipedia already has a page outlining what the tobacco brides were, so this part of the article should be aligned with that page.
Suggestion: reword or add context.
Lewisguile ( talk) 09:54, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
Quotes are often used selectively in this article, and often omit important context that works against the article’s presumed “thesis”. The arguments presented by scholars and critics are only partially referred to.
For example, Leah Donnella argues that “white trash” is also offensive to people of colour because a) it implies that those other people are inherently “trash” so don’t need a racial qualifier, and b) the tropes used to portray “white trash” as “bad poor” are the same tropes used to stereotype people of colour.
In her discussion with Wray, she also points out that “white trash” implies poor whites are “not quite white”. Source: https://www.npr.org/2018/07/30/633891473/why-its-time-to-retire-the-disparaging-term-white-trash
The following was also removed:
'Sociologist Matt Wray also claims that the term is used to perpetuate the long-held belief that poor whites are more racist than wealthier whites. This helps affluent whites to avoid criticism as racists while characterising poor whites as the embodiment of "real" prejudice. Wray states:
“Whites who use the term are saying, ‘Look, I’m not racist. The person down the road is racist. The one who drops the N-word, or has the Confederate flag flapping off the back of their truck. That’s real racism.’"' (Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/08/01/605084163/why-its-still-ok-to-trash-poor-white-people)
This is important context for why "white trash" is racist and covers a crucial part of the modern stereotype of "white trash" as more racist than other people.
Lewisguile ( talk) 10:02, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
This one is more subjective, but I'm leaving it here for completeness' sake. Some of the text uses weasel words and peacock prose, which we can mark in-line for now. More general issues are covered below.
Firstly, the prose is often very verbose and archaic. Consider this sentence:
'In the popular imagination of the mid-19th century, "poor white trash" were a "curious" breed of degenerate, gaunt and, haggard people who suffered from numerous physical and social defects. They were dirty, callow, ragged, cadaverous, leathery, and emaciated, and had feeble children with distended abdomens who were wrinkled and withered and looked aged beyond their physical years, so that even 10-year-olds' "countenances are stupid and heavy and they often become dropsical and loathsome to sight," according to a New Hampshire schoolteacher. The skin of a poor white Southerner had a "ghastly yellowish-white" tinge to it, like "yellow parchment", and was waxy looking;, or they were so white they almost appeared to be albinos. The parents were listless and slothful, did not properly care for their children, and were addicted to alcohol. They were looked on with contempt by both upper-class planters and yeoman – the non-slave-owning smallholders.'
All of these descriptors aren't needed. Gaunt, haggard, cadaverous, emaciated all mean roughly the same thing (=they look thin and deathly). We don't need all of them. You could summarise it as saying they suffer from "numerous physical and social defects" or you could just trim down the examples so they're not long lists of adjectives. Similarly, wrinkled, withered, aged beyond their physical years (=they look old).
This occurs throughout the article. Lewisguile ( talk) 10:50, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
This is one paragraph:
'In the mid-19th century South, even upper-class parents were extremely indulgent of their children, encouraging both boys and girls to be aggressive, even ferocious. They soon learned that they were expected to grab for what they wanted, wrestle with their siblings in front of their parents, disobey parental orders, make a racket with their toys, and physically attack visitors. Patrician girls would later be taught to be proper young ladies, but boys continued to be unrestrained, lest they become effeminate. These behaviors – which were also practiced by poorer whites to the extent their circumstances allowed – propelled young men into gambling, drinking, whoring and fighting, which "manly" behavior was more or less expected – but which their mothers carefully did not allow themselves to be aware of – and which was certainly preferred to effeminacy. This pattern of child-rearing was predominate in the backwoods, where it was not limited to the upper class, but could be found among yeoman and poor whites alike. For white trash, given this method of raising children, combined with violent folkways inherited from their English, Irish, and Scottish progenitors, it is not unremarkable that their culture should have been a violent one.'
As well as featuring a number of archaic words ("lest", "whoring"), it also displays editorialising and a clear POV (we describe children as "even ferocious", mothers "carefully" don't pay attention, presumed violence is clearly deemed "unremarkable"). If a reliable source has argued that these "violent folkways" were inherited from British and Irish progenitors, for example, then we should quote that source, instead of saying it in Wikipedia's voice. Lewisguile ( talk) 11:00, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
The opening paragraph of the history section is:
'Beginning in the early 17th century, the City of London shipped their unwanted excess population, including vagrant children, to the American colonies – especially the Colony of Virginia, the Province of Maryland, and the Province of Pennsylvania – where they became not apprentices, as the children had been told, but indentured servants, working particularly in the fields, especially in Maryland and Tidewater Virginia. Even before the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade brought Africans to the British colonies in 1619, this influx of "transported" English, Welsh, Scots, and Irish was a crucial part of the American workforce. The Virginia Company also imported boatloads of poor women to be sold as brides. The numbers of these all-but-slaves was significant: by the middle of the 17th century, at a time when the population of Virginia was 11,000, only 300 were Africans, who were outnumbered by English, Irish and Scots indentured servants. In New England, one-fifth of the Puritans were indentured servants. More indentured servants were sent to the colonies as a result of insurrections in Ireland. Oliver Cromwell sent hundreds of Irish Catholics to British North America during the Irish Confederate Wars (1641–1653).'
This paragraph only has a single reference and yet there are numerous claims, presented as fact, which conflict with the material at Indentured servitude in British America.
Lewisguile ( talk) 11:22, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
Apart from the issues above, I think one thing that needs to be considered about this article is its scope. It starts out about a "derogatory racial and classist slur", but expands to include an over-sized and detailed history of poor, white, southern Americans. Is this the purpose of the article? Is this not content that should be in a more suitable article, rather than as part of an article about a slur? Is this content not already elsewhere in Wikipedia? Do the sources for all this even include the phrase? There is a distinct hint of WP:COATRACK about it all. Escape Orbit (Talk) 11:20, 28 May 2024 (UTC)