poor whites
Destitute European-descended Americans
Poor whites refers to white people of low socioeconomic status, particularly in the American South.
The term carries historical weight from slavery and Jim Crow eras, when it distinguished impoverished whites from the planter class while still marking their racial separation from Black people.
It often implies not just poverty but a perceived lack of education or refinement: Poor whites and enslaved people sometimes worked the same fields.
The term can be descriptive or disparaging depending on context and speaker.
- trailer parkCommunity of relocatable dwellings
- AppalachiaEastern U.S. mountain region
- hillbillyRural mountain dweller stereotype
- redneckRural Southern laborer stereotype
- working classManual laborers collectively
paycheck to paycheck · rural · poverty · grinding poverty · down and out · welfare · food stamps · food desert · company town · holler · rust belt · dead end job · sharecropper · tenant farmer · opioid · meth · unemployment · struggling
poor whitesruling class
Dominant governing stratum
power elite · social elite · the one percent · plutocrats · landed gentry
poor, whites, white, poorly, poorer, poorest, poorness, whiter, whitest