Do you come from a white trash town?

No. I come from a formerly nice town that had riots in the 1960s. Then there was white flight, and now, anytime I read about my erstwhile town online, it's preceded by "Don't move to _______."

It broke my father's heart.

No. I grew up in a nice respectable upper middle class town.

No. I grew up in an nice neighborhood in Chicago. I wouldn't say there weren't problems there, though.

Sounds like a David Lynch movie. Or John Waters.

I'm from Texas so I'm from a trash state.

I'm from a white trash and black trash town, how does that work?

Yes I’m from what used to be a white working class first ring suburb of Detroit.

What aren't you telling us, R1? Your comment raises more questions than answers.

I grew up in a town that had moderate amounts of white flight in the 90s and 2000s. My parents didn’t have the wherewithal or ambition to leave so we just watched the town change. Not drastic except for a small uptick in crime and gang activity, also the schools went a bit downhill also.

I grew up in what was once a small town outside of Houston but is now probably close to 200,000 residents - the word “affluent” is often used to describe it. My high school girl’s golf team were Texas state champs five years in a row back in the 80s (no shortage of country clubs) and most of the Houston sports stars loved there (Moses Malone lived down the street from us and Frank Beard from ZZ Top lived next door to my high school boyfriend).

I think “white trash” is a tacky phrase but every city has trashy people, no matter how well-off.

R10 This sounds like Naperville, Illinois.

tacky phrase

That would be DL, that's why we come here.

Kind of? It’s not where I was born but the town I grew up in was very trashy. There’s a lot of trash with cash there now. People who make a lot in the trades but still behave like white trash.

No. I didn’t

Rednecks with money describes much of my hometown.

Yep. Uneducated and proud it of trash crowd.

Trash with cash. Oh dear. I can see the siding and overscheduled kids with strange names from here.

Yes. The only bookstore in my hometown was an Adult book store with the ultra-creative name of XXX Bookstore. It was located across the highway from a trailer park and a block away from a bowling alley and a Baptist church. Ther was also a pawn shop around the corner.

East Hampton trash

R18 Fun for the whole family. Even dad!

Yes, highest per capita bars, churches, child sexual assault, % of children in foster care. Also 97% white and stronghold of the klan in Massachusetts when I was growing up.

I live in West Virginia now. Going from Chicago to Here is kind of like a John Waters movie. LMAO, there are some real characters here. It's beautiful here, and kind of trashy, but I like the people. Everybody knows everybody and they are usually related in some way. My husband's Nephews half brother was living under a made up name. One day I was outside smoking and he came flying up the road and the cops were right on him. He led them up the hollow and ditched the truck, which belonged to his step-dad. They didn't catch him for almost two months. His made up name was Paul Ball. His real name is unreal. Lol, he's crazy and funny, and good at telling stories.

I grew up in a nice middle to upper class town. Many decades later, it's still a nice town.

My family did drive through East St. Louis on occasion.

R24 did you like it?

R10 had me searching the UIL archives trying to figure out her high school. Then I thought why am I doing this?

I grew up in a small third-tier manufacturing rust belt town, full of Italian immigrants, that used to be a thriving place before I was born. It had a busy downtown with three different mid-range department stores, tailors, beauty parlors, florists, a G.C. Murphy, and a movie theater, as well as the county courthouse and library. A lot of that was still hanging on when I was a child in the 70s, but in the mid-70s the mills shut down and the town's slow slide into white trash hellhole status accelerated. Politically it's done a complete 180 from staunch union Democrats to 70% Trump in the last election. I'm surprised my father (active in Democratic town politics for most of his life) isn't haunting the streets as an angry ghost.

Glastonbury, CT. Not really trashy.

Yes although it's becoming more of a middle class bedroom community. I felt like I was better than most of the kids I went to school with.

Me too.

My town would be the drunk, broke uncle at a county Thanksgiving.

Yes - i grew up on a farm near the Mississippi River in northwestern Illinois.

My tiny high school didn't offer a foreign language, but it DID host an annual "Drive Your Tractor to School Day."

OP, what part of Maryland?

There's no point fucking a black guy if he acts like a white guy. Sorry, if I go black I want complete ignorant ghetto or what's the point?

R34 Please take your ignorant ass on somewhere. What the fuck are you even talking about.

Your visual of John Belushi matches Calumet City.

I worked with a lady from Calumet City and she commuted to Naperville.

r35 Oh gawd DL has to do something about the white trash here.

I come from a deplorable white trash country apparently.

It was the largest city in Southwestern Indiana and recently frequent campaign stop for our soon to be fuhrer. It was referred to by a friend of my dad as the place where they’d stick the hose if the state of Indiana needed an enema. It was the most populous place for 2 hours in every direction, so when I met a kid from a tiny town at summer camp he said we came from the big city, and he wasn’t joking. My parents ,over away from there decades ago and I’ve never been back.

*moved away

Not so much trashy as lowbrow. I grew up in the suburbs of a metro area of 2 million people; however, the part of town I’m from is very insular, solipsistic, and almost tribal. Anything from elsewhere was rejected. When I finally escaped, I quickly realized I was ill-equipped on a social level. Often feeling like an Eliza Doolittle, I had to consciously learn how to move in different circles and had to be a quick study of others.

Back in the 70s Lily Tomlin had a character Mrs. Judith Beasley, a housewife from Calumet City, Illinois. The other thing I remember about Calumet City was a Tidy Bowl commercial with testimony from an actual housewife from there. The product worked so well she invited viewers to come to her house to ‘smell my toilet”.

I’m dreaming of a white trash Christmas just like the ones I used to know…

I’m NOT from Calumet City.

Re Calumet City

Every neighbor’s dad was a cop or uncle was a cop.

There was a front yard sun worshipper mom on every block who was not yet MTG rough.

My garbage picking habit was framed as malicious snooping - like a seven year-old would spy on someone with a black eye and broken teeth..

No trash in the suburb I grew up in. Unavoidable where I am now. But I can afford to live here, and couldn’t remotely live there, and that’s what matters.

My town was a bit of a nice new suburb when I was growing up, but we were otherwise between a bunch of white trash towns, either old farm towns or rusty industrial towns, in the area of Western PA where I was raised.

My town had everything from the trashiest squalor to the most refined luxury.

R27 Sylvia, I suspect we didn't live far from each other!

My parents were from Johnstown, and the nearest towns to me growing up were Monroeville (the site of one of the Living Dead movies) and Greensburg. All solidly Dem in the 70s, now a Trump stronghold. All of those cities have sort of floated adrift since the collapse of steel and related industries, and while it's been a 50 year or more decline, most of the dumb Trumpers who remain in those towns all blame the immigrants, Muslims and trans people for woes they've had since before Reagan came into office....go figure.

My hometown wasn't white trash when I grew up. It was a small rural town in Ohio, but most homes were neat and well-kept, though nothing fancy. There was a mentally ill woman that roamed around town and businesses let her come in from the cold & restaurants kept her fed. It was the kind of place where literally everyone knew everyone and even though people were nosy, they also looked out for each other too. Now it looks like some town out of the hollers of WV - rundown homes with trash in the yards, seedy types that hang out smoke all day and Trump Flags aplenty. Very depressing.

R51 The thing that makes me sad is....that people are celebrating that decrepitness. My little town wasn't anything special but yes, people took care of their homes. Now people revel in the hideousness, and worship a Trump God that will take them farther into squalor. Because apparently a nice house is for them there liberal elites.

Decrepitude

Fancy don’t let me down

If the best place to shop in your town is Walmart you live in a white trash town.

I’m from East Hampton, Long Island

Typical DL class-conscious thread, with humblebrag posters making sure you know they come from the higher socioeconomic strata.

I’m still of waiting for the OP to tell us what part of Maryland. Answer me cunt.

White, not trash. Lotsa Jews. Lotsa Chinese. Great public schools. America’s first suburb. It used to be “the country” and Olmstead’s office was down the street. Now it’s pretty urban. Bette Davis’ son used to be a Selectman.

Summers on the Irish Riviera with food delivered from S. S. Pierce (all the comforts of home) as otherwise it was the A&P. And Nana didn’t like the A&P.

R56 the trailer park in Easthampton?

What's happening near my white trash town?

Oh, grandma fell down a sinkhole. And you?

So you're from Sugar Land or Missouri City, R10?

When I was growing up, my town was a solidly blue-collar working-class suburb of Dallas. The people there weren't white trash per se. At the time, it was mostly families where the parents were the first generation to escape their white trash rural towns in East Texas, looking to make a better life for themselves and their kids. Like most suburbs, it has deteriorated as each successive generation moved further out into the exurbs or left the area altogether. So it's not so much white trash now as it is just trash. My family is all gone from there, so I rarely make it back. But on the ocassions when I do find myself there, I'm somewhat saddened by what it has become.

Torrance California. Middle class nice white & Asian suburb of LA. There's an oil refinery so there is some well paid white trash. But overall, the Okies have stayed out.

Ooooh you grew up around white people! He must be wealthy!

R10 where did you live? I'm in Houston. Kingwood, Clear Lake area, Katy?

I always think of Silence of the Lambs when Calumet City is mentioned.

R62 is from Mesquite

Op you filthy whore. Why not follow up on your thread.

To clarify things, in the south there's a difference between white trash and rednecks. A lot of rednecks have money. Most are traditional blue collar workers which often pay very well. They have nice houses, lots of toys like guns, boats and Harleys, sometimes a hunting cabin or beach house. White trash are a different breed.

R59 Scarsdale has indeed become quite urban in feel. But it is impossibly expensive, with very high taxes and very competitive atmosphere overall. If you succeed as a kid there, then great. If not, it is hell on Earth.

I come from a "good" town on the North Shore of Long Island. The type of place where men still wore (and still wear) nantucket red pants or wide wale cords with embroidered pineapples or whales on top.

When I was a kid, there was certainly a lot of money. But nothing like today.

The strangest thing for me is how many of my peers still live there. Like, who wants to live in that isolated world in 2024?

R59 I know nothing about Scarsdale. But it sounds a lot like Brookline.

Wasn't Scarsdale a wealthy enclave outside NYC? I got that from a Doris Day movie where she decorated a rich water buffalo's house in Scarsdale.

I don’t understand your question.

[quote]I grew up in a small third-tier manufacturing rust belt town, full of Italian immigrants, that used to be a thriving place before I was born.

R27, Youngstown, OH?

I remember one of my fave professors said something I will never forget- that the term "White trash" is problematic because it insinuates that white people cant be poor/ broke/ low class etc wveryrhing that term implies.

We don't aay Black trash do we?

I was conceived in a mental hospital, my mother perculated me in the same place Ted Bundy's mother perculated him and I spent my childhood in a trailer park with 4 large dogs, 2 cats, a cockatiel, a skunk and a crow as pets.

I CHALLENGE you to find more white trash than me.

Whoops, and a boa constrictor who got it's head chopped off by a boyfriend of my mother.

The 2nd guy I ever fell in love with came from poor white trash; he died from an OD.

Wasn’t born in one but I was raised in several.

Clarksville, TN

Massachusetts Hilltowns

Culpeper, VA

Idk about white trash but it's currently the very low end of Silicon Valley. A different kind of trash.

R77 Melania?

r82, I said white trash, not trash whore. How very dare you!

R22 I'd love to hear more stories of WV. Sounds like a book or movie could be in the making. If you live in a beautiful part of the country and get along with the community around you, count your blessings. I don't care how upscale a place is, if the people suck, it sucks.

Aurora CO

It's mostly Venezuelan...

I grew up in a southern mining town of about 1000.

Not really trashy, but kind salt of the Earth people who would do anything for you. They were poor and some rough, but overall they had good hearts.

I grew up in a wealthy suburb of the Bay Area. The snobbery was palpable back in the 70's but nothing like it is today. Even the biggest houses were occupied by cool open minded people. Artists and crafts people. A few stock brokers too. Rich people of generational wealth now own the town, moving in from all over the world for that tech dollar.. Mostly the locals are stuck into the over priced apartments. The middle class scuttles around the edges of town trying to avoid the high rents and shit pay. Developers turned the post industrial areas into massive block sized shit and shower condos for the slaves to try to buy. Malls now cover the weedy lots we used to play in. Those fake town home type malls, fake as hell. Its so sad. The devolpers won. White trash I prefer to rich snob.

I grew up on a farm in rural Ohio, so there were no “large cities” aside from where Jimmy Hamel claims to have originated. It is NOT Appalachia, either.

When I was growing up, there were trashy white people in my area and school - complete with tattoos - and this was in the 70s.

I periodically go back to the county for the local fair (they sell fresh, locally grown and butchered beef, pork and chicken). It has turned into a hillbilly hell.

Junk cars in every yard, couches on the porch, dogs running loose and orange traitor signs, flags, shirts, hats and graffiti everywhere. It’s sad and pathetic

No, but I wish I did!

I grew up in a suburb that, if you saw it now, would lead you to conclude that my parents were dripping with money and that all the homeowners on our street must have been doctors and lawyers.

I had no idea that I was being raised in splendor. We skied in winter and sailed the boat in the summer and so did everybody else.

I was born in a black majority town (I am white). My grandparents still live there

R62

Good Heavens! Why, Sugar Land, of course!

R65

Early life (late 60s) between Sharpstown and Meyerland but moved to Sugar Land when I was six. My dad still lives there.

R22

I lived in Baltimore for seven years (and I’m a huge John Waters fan) and you don’t know how close to the truth you are:

R76 it is amazing to me how easily and cluelessly people use the phrase white trash. It’s completely racist and needs to be retired.

Like R51, I’m from small town Ohio. Until I went off to college forty years ago, it was full of well kept homes and mostly decent people. There were only three apartment buildings and those had only 4-6 units each. The downtown shopping area was three blocks long, with two- and three-story buildings. Aside from the post office and bank, there were a few mom and pop eateries, a print shop, a furniture store, a Lawsons convenience store. Five churches and two traffic lights.

Then in the late 80s, an arsonist torched the downtown. The properties sat vacant for years after the clean up. All the trees that lined the main drag were removed and not replaced. Eventually some modular structures were moved in — a gun shop, a check cashing joint, a Chinese fast food place, a self storage business. Farmers aged and died, then their land was sold to developers, who build ticky tacky homes that were purchased by investors then rented out. Many turn of the century houses were demolished and not rebuilt. Today over half the town’s residents rent.

The local, hometown girl who took over her father’s pharmacy got into filling prescriptions from pain clinics, which led to a federal raid and arrests. By that time, the town was known for OxyContin and black tar herion. It’s cleaned up a bit in the last decade mainly because the old manufacturing park north of town was revitalized with the opening of new facilities that provide a few hundred well paying jobs. When I went home last summer, I was happy to see many old homes have been rehabilitated, trees have been planted along streets where they were absent for decades, and the many houses that had junk cars in their lawns were cleaned up.

There are a few areas just outside of town that now have a lot of expensive, fancy homes and a new school campus was completed. Families are moving in again and village council has rezoned the old downtown to attract new businesses. Two structure were under construction last summer. My dad still owns the 1910 house I grew up in and intends to give it me. I was dreading that for some time, but I’m optimistic now.

[quote] it is amazing to me how easily and cluelessly people use the phrase white trash. It’s completely racist and needs to be retired.

The people I’ve heard say it say it about themselves or their relatives.

I came from the NICEST part of a meh town.

My mom always said we lived on a 'state' road -- not a city one -- so that we had better snow plowing and upkeep.

I think I was envied by some kids when they saw that I lived on a nice street in a nice house.

Of course, it was hell inside in many ways. A parent died very early on. The resulting dysfunction was rough. But I did love the house.

Blue collar white people are tired of being disrespected. Stop disrespecting them.

More or less. It was more comfortable redneck than down at the heels white trash, but I came to regard it as a trashy place. The taste was for modest ranch houses on as large a lot as could be afforded, with large garages. The number of vehicular bays on the always front-facing garages was status enough for most. There was no plantings beyond a lawn and maybe a couple of cheap yews, but tawdry mail box personalization and pots of cheerful plastic flowers and sparkly wind chimes were frequent. .

In school you could observe how boys veered in two directions in life; by early adolescence, many had adopted a high, choppy hick accent (not quite that shrill Momma's Family accent, but close enough), while others carried on in a more neutral Mid-Atlantic voice with a relative few words that could pin them to an area on a map. The second group mostly abandoned the first, moving on to other places in life. For girls, the parallel division was expressed more in those who were headed to college and those who were headed to marriage and family and building a modest house with a big garage on the corner of their parent's family.

The locals seemed to tell themselves with a suspicious frequency and definitiveness that they had everything thing they needed right there, and expressed no curiosity for anything different or from afar to a point of real suspicion and fear. It was as though they feared being steered too easily down a wrong path. They fit the film stereotype of the locals who look at a window or turn for a good, stern-faced look at a passerby, "not from around here" and generally resisted any newcomers who didn't assimilate quickly and fully. I recall the best new blood teachers rarely lasted more than a few years, the single ones a year or two. It was less a nefarious plot than the fact there was noting to do and even fewer people to do it with. Like-minded sorts were incredibly scarce who didn't conform to the local disinterests must have been made of strong stuff or endured it until they couldn't. The very small professional and wealthier class had it easier because these were people who had been educated afar and maybe travelled and been exposed to higher education and ideas.