this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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I never understood this, as my grandparents were always grandma/grandpa, or granny (in my paternal granmothers case she preferred it).
Then I moved to the south, and met my husband's family and friends. Every single one of them had weird names for at least one of their grandparents. A lot of them called grandmother "meemaw" and my father in law is papaw to my neices and nephews.
I took it as a cultural thing, but it still feels a bit strange to me.
I fucking hate meemaw/mamaw and papaw with a passion. Partly because me ex's white-trash family uses them, but also they just sound stupid and I hate saying/hearing them
I get that your anger probably comes from the frustration of a bad relationship. I also want to encourage you not to use bigoted terms. Just refering to them as your ex's family, or ex's fucked up family would have gotten a similar message across.
It really undermines your point, draws focus away from what youre trying communicate, & makes you look like a biased and unreliable narrator.
I hope that ex is out of your life & you're in a happier place now.
I thought it was dumb the first time I ever heard it.
They are literally the picture perfect stereotype of white trash I call it like I see it.
And no, we have two kids so she will never be out of my life. I am however in a happier place. Well actually the exact same place but now without her narcissistic gaslighting and constant put-downs :)
Ah co-parenting with an ex can be super tricky. It sounds like at least a half win though, you aren't in the same house any more :) congrats on the break up, I know getting out of toxic relationships takes it's toll
& I get that the word is part of your vocabulary, I can't change that, just encourage some reflection. It's a term that's been used against me so I'm perticularly sensitive to it. Here is a link to an article in case you or someone else is interested in the history of the term.
White trash?
Do people really not know this term anymore?
I've heard the term, but the only meaning for it I can think of is that they're trash because they're white.
It's actually kind of a fucked up term but a lot of people don't consider it, it's both super racist and classist. I don't really think less of anyone for saying it because it's such a common term but I personally don't like using it. The original implication is that poor white folks are "trash", comparing them to enslaved African Americans.
I always read it as referring to people who are (a) white and (b) trash, without either adjective implying all A are B or vice versa. Like: I've got a red cup on my desk, but that doesn't mean everything red is a cup or that all cups are red.
The Wikipedia article even describes it very much like how I did. Like I said, I understand how people view it but the word at the least has very nasty roots
That was a fascinating wiki read. I'm not equating the two terms, but it definitely has its likeness with the n word in terms of etymology and white (specifically Anglo) supremacy.
You make a good point, but I don't think that holds in the case of combining insults with people groups. Consider "jedi scum" or "filthy thieves" for example.
I also find it to be a derogatory, distasteful, and bigoted term. I definetly think less of people I hear who use it, & hope eventually it will be dropped from the cultural conciousness like other bigoted terms.
It's a way to police what "whiteness" should be, and is a term I've only ever heard from well off and judgemental people.
I've heard a lot of poor folk use it too, it's basically just a derogatory term for a redneck in the Midwest where I live. I don't think a lot of people really understand it's implications.
That's fair. It's definetly one of those offensive terms people use without necessarily thinking about, like "getting gyped" or "pot calling the kettle black".
Knowing is half the battle & raising awareness is half of activism lol
"Pot calling the kettle black" isn't racist though, you gotta know the right things and raise the right awareness.
This term is trickier since it is entangled with Europe's long standing use of blackness to denote wrongness. & that whole dichotomy of good=white bad=black is an often talked about source of controversy in literature.
As the wiki says "It means a situation in which somebody accuses someone else of a fault which the accuser shares". In the case of the quote the fault is being black. Both pot and kettle are black.
Here is an article I found that did a good job delving into the topic. They end up agreeing the term is okay to use but also offer some alternative phrases that side step the potentially offensive phrasing. My fav was, "the wifi calling the narrator unreliable".
Well, white people aren't white and black people aren't black, so there's that.
100%, they're just incorrect human made labels.
Still in the modern english speaking world, those words carry racial undertones. Especially in the US.
I agree with the article that the phrase has nothing to do with race. Also, blackness in the idiom doesn’t connote shame or badness and it's ok to use it.
Definetly your choice to make.
I don't mostly because I have a 'replays in the middle of the night' memory of using it in conversation with a black woman & she let me know exactly how it made her feel. Idk sometimes offense isn't about history it's just about how the random person next to you feels & the phrase isn't so important to me that I can't express the same thing in different words.
I'm struggling to think of a situation where I'd say that to a black woman but I can see how in hindsight it wouldn't be the best turn of phrase. Obviously we should be aware of what we're saying to an audience, but at face value it's not a racist phrase and the lady was wrong to shame you for it.
It was during a class discussion, definetly thoughtless on my part. She didnt shame me, just explained how she felt about it. It was an english course so exploring the connotations of language was pretty typical.
I think of it as a moment that really thought me about the complexities of every day language & the impact of cultural tropes (like the light good, dark bad concept).
Idk lol I'm not trying to change your mind, I think you can use the phrase & will probably never get any push back for it. I guess this is mostly an explination why I used that example in the way above comment. For me, it's a charged phrase that can be percieved as derogatory.
The term usually refers to white people who are poor and uneducated, often live in rural areas. This is to group them with the traditional stereotypes of ethnic minorities who are stereotyped to share a similar socioeconomic status. And to separate them from the good respectable white people who have money and jobs and education.
Oh wow, that's worse than I thought. Honestly, I was half expecting a "yeah, that's what it is, but it's actually okay because..."
The historical usage is that they're trash despite their whiteness. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_trash
It means poor
Well poor whites, specifically
Poor and low impulse control.
People can be poor without being trashy
I also think it's not limited to poor people. I've absolutely heard well-off people referred to as "white trash" based on their behaviors.
Never heard that term?
It's definitely a cultural thing because I had the same experience. Although, It think it's become more common to use different names for grandparents up north in recent years. My mom and dad, who have lived in Wisconsin their entire lives, are "Nana" and "Papa". Growing up I don't remember hearing anyone call their grandparents that.
It's wild down here. Thanks to a convoluted family tree due to adoption, divorce, and remarriage I had a total of 11 grandparents. Most of the men were Pawpaw to distinguish them except one who refused to be called anything except Grandfather and another we called pappy. Every one of the women had a different name loosely based on a mispronunciation of Granny.
I met a kid once who called his grandma "bonne-maman", lit. "good-mommy"
Meanwhile in my family everyone is using everyone's first name...
It was always gran for my English grandma and grandma for the American one in my house. "Grandpa" to the faces of both, but their names if they weren't around. But it was always grandma or gran no matter if they were around or not