Talk:White trash

message: The article claims 'The Virginia Company also imported boatloads of poor women to be sold as brides.' This is misleading. The women were transpored to America, but they weren't "sold". The men paid for their transport but they were incentivised with land, inheritance and the right to choose their own husbands.
The Atlantic confirms, 'Although the financially strapped Virginia Company was eager to recoup the costs of sponsoring the Jamestown brides, it was not selling women.' 
History.com also agrees: https://www.history.com/news/jamestown-colony-women-brides-program
Wikipedia already has a page outlining what the tobacco brides were, so this part of the article should be aligned with that page. 
Suggestion: reword or add context.
Lewisguile (talk) 09:54, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, "boatloads" is arguably loaded language. A more neutral approach would be to indicate roughly how many women were transported. Lewisguile (talk) 11:56, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: Factual issue: tobacco brides

message: This one is more subjective, but I'm leaving it here for completeness' sake. Some of the text uses weasel words and peacock prose, which we can mark in-line for now. More general issues are covered below.
Firstly, the prose is often very verbose and archaic. Consider this sentence: 
'In the popular imagination of the mid-19th century, "poor white trash" were a "curious" breed of degenerate, gaunt and, haggard people who suffered from numerous physical and social defects. They were dirty, callow, ragged, cadaverous, leathery, and emaciated, and had feeble children with distended abdomens who were wrinkled and withered and looked aged beyond their physical years, so that even 10-year-olds' "countenances are stupid and heavy and they often become dropsical and loathsome to sight," according to a New Hampshire schoolteacher. The skin of a poor white Southerner had a "ghastly yellowish-white" tinge to it, like "yellow parchment", and was waxy looking;, or they were so white they almost appeared to be albinos. The parents were listless and slothful, did not properly care for their children, and were addicted to alcohol. They were looked on with contempt by both upper-class planters and yeoman – the non-slave-owning smallholders.'
All of these descriptors aren't needed. Gaunt, haggard, cadaverous, emaciated all mean roughly the same thing (=they look thin and deathly). We don't need all of them. You could summarise it as saying they suffer from "numerous physical and social defects" or you could just trim down the examples so they're not long lists of adjectives. Similarly, wrinkled, withered, aged beyond their physical years (=they look old).
This occurs throughout the article. Lewisguile (talk) 10:50, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: See also: 'lived in poverty because of inherent traits in their nature.' Inherent traits are part of one's nature, so you don't need to say both. 'Inherent traits' alone will suffice. Lewisguile (talk) 11:06, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: Prose style: Overwriting

message: The opening paragraph of the history section is:
'Beginning in the early 17th century, the City of London shipped their unwanted excess population, including vagrant children, to the American colonies – especially the Colony of Virginia, the Province of Maryland, and the Province of Pennsylvania – where they became not apprentices, as the children had been told, but indentured servants, working particularly in the fields, especially in Maryland and Tidewater Virginia. Even before the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade brought Africans to the British colonies in 1619, this influx of "transported" English, Welsh, Scots, and Irish was a crucial part of the American workforce. The Virginia Company also imported boatloads of poor women to be sold as brides. The numbers of these all-but-slaves was significant: by the middle of the 17th century, at a time when the population of Virginia was 11,000, only 300 were Africans, who were outnumbered by English, Irish and Scots indentured servants. In New England, one-fifth of the Puritans were indentured servants. More indentured servants were sent to the colonies as a result of insurrections in Ireland. Oliver Cromwell sent hundreds of Irish Catholics to British North America during the Irish Confederate Wars (1641–1653).'
This paragraph only has a single reference and yet there are numerous claims, presented as fact, which conflict with the material at Indentured servitude in British America.
# We need a direct citation for shipping unwanted people and orphaned children to the Americas against their will. I am almost certain this may have some basis in fact, but I can't adjudicate how accurate it is without such a source. Most modern scholars say that the majority of transported children were brought over by their extended families to work.
# It conflates penal transportations with indentured servitude. We should be accurate and specific when talking about each.
# The "selling" of brides is hyperbole and misleading (see topic up the page).
# "all-but-slaves" is editorialising. If this is a direct quote, make that clear. Indentured servitude is a specific form of bonded servitude, sometimes described as slavery, but we shouldn't present an opinion on that as fact. We should also be accurate to avoid the Irish slaves myth.
# "only 300 were Africans..." is partial information. How many were from other groups, specifically? It's editorialising in that it seems to present a very vague point to add to a "thesis". Again, let's avoid the Irish slaves myth too.
# "More indentured servants" -- how many? Two? A million? It's vague and seems only added to build to a thesis.
# There's no talk about the duration of indentured servitude, that most Europeans were engaged in free wage labour, or that the number of free and formerly indentured workers outnumbered indentured servants at any given time, with some exceptions.
Lewisguile (talk) 11:22, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: Factual issue: Indentured servitude

message: Apart from the issues above, I think one thing that needs to be considered about this article is its scope.  It starts out about a "derogatory racial and classist slur", but expands to include an over-sized and detailed history of poor, white, southern Americans.  Is this the purpose of the article?  Is this not content that should be in a more suitable article, rather than as part of an article about a slur?  Is this content not already elsewhere in Wikipedia?  Do the sources for all this even include the phrase?  There is a distinct hint of WP:COATRACK about it all. Escape Orbit (Talk) 11:20, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Very fair point. I did wonder that myself. Lewisguile (talk) 17:43, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

text: The most heavily cited source in the  section is . "White trash" is literally in the title. That said, the book is from a trade publisher rather than an academic press, and claims to tell an "untold history" by "upend[ing] assumptions" in the vein of many a bestseller. So it's doubtful whether the source represents current scholarly consensus. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 18:07, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this potentially accounts for the disparities between, e.g., her account of indenture and the actual Wikipedia page on the same topic. Isenberg is probably building a thesis to sell her book, so she is naturally being selective, and simplifying for a mainstream audience. Lewisguile (talk) 11:35, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Coatrack