In common usage, 'white trash' overlaps in meaning with ' cracker', used of people in the backcountry of the Southern states ' hillbilly', regarding poor people from Appalachia ' Okie' regarding those with origins in Oklahoma and ' redneck', regarding rural origins especially in the South. While the term is mostly used pejoratively by urban and middle-class whites as a class signifier, some white entertainers self-identify as 'white trash', considering it a badge of honor, and celebrate the stereotypes and social marginalization of lower-class whiteness.

The term has been adopted for people living on the fringes of the social order, who are seen as dangerous because they may be criminal, unpredictable, and without respect for political, legal, or moral authority. Use of the term provides for middle- and upper-class whites a means of distancing themselves from the poverty and powerlessness of poor whites, members of a privileged class – whites – who cannot enjoy those privileges. It is used as a way to separate the 'noble and hardworking' 'good poor' from the lazy, 'undisciplined, ungrateful and disgusting' 'bad poor'. The label signifies a social class inside the white population and especially a degraded standard of living. White trash is a derogatory racial and class-related slur used in American English to refer to poor white people, especially in the rural southern United States.

This poor white family from Alabama was presented in 1913 as 'celebrities' because they had escaped the debilitating effects of hookworm disease, which, along with pellagra was endemic among poor Southern whites due to poor sanitation and the phenomenon of 'clay eating' ( geophagia).

Halt right there criminal scum