ABSTRACT
Waters' optimistic prediction, "white trash" is not likely to go away. Six months have come and gone and, for better or worse, the term looks like it's here to stay. It's here to stay, we argue, because so many Americans find it useful. In a country so steeped in the myth of classlessness, in a culture where we are often at a loss to explain or understand poverty, the white trash stereotype serves as a useful way of blaming the poor for being poor. The term white trash helps solidify for the middle and upper classes a sense of cultural and intellectual superiority. But, as Waters points out, "white
trash" is not just a classist slur-it's also a racial epithet that marks out certain whites as a breed apart, a dysgenic race unto themselves.
