poor white
Destitute light-skinned person
A poor white is a white person of low socioeconomic status, especially in the rural American South.
The term dates to the antebellum period, when it distinguished impoverished whites from enslaved Black people and wealthy planters.
It carries condescension—implying not just poverty but a degraded social position: The plantation owner wouldn't let his daughter marry a poor white.
The compound appears in related terms like poor white trash.
- hillbillyRural mountain dweller stereotype
- working-classManual laborers as group
- redneckRural Southern laborer stereotype
- racial hierarchyRanking groups by ancestry
- tenant farmingAgriculture on leased property
sharecropping · cracker · Great Depression · underprivileged · Southern United States · subsistence farming · Jim Crow laws · stigmatization · media portrayal · disenfranchisement · destitution · Okies · Appalachia · coal mining · Dolly Parton · ethnic identity · food desert · marginalization
poor whiteold money
Long-established family fortune
WASP · country club set · landed gentry · trust fund kid · one percenter
poor whiteplantation owner
Agricultural estate proprietor
ruling class · power elite · blue blood · high society · patrician
poor, white, poorly, poorer, poorest, poverty, impoverish, impoverished, impoverishment