The Poor White (or Poor Whites of the South for clarity) are an American sociocultural group, of European descent, having origins in the Southern United States and Appalachia. They first emerged as a social caste in the Antebellum South, consisting of white, agrarian, economically disadvantaged laborers or squatters often possessing neither land nor slaves. In contemporary context the term is still used to pertain to their descendants; regardless of present economic status. While similar to other White Americans in ancestry, the Poor White differ notably in regards to their history and culture.
Famous quotes containing the words poor and/or white:
“We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“I have a dream: in my dream ... Aretha Franklin, in her fabulous black-lipstick “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” outfit, leaps from her seat at Maxim’s and, shouting “Think!,” blasts Lacan, Derrida and Foucault like dishrags against the wall, then leads thousands of freed academic white slaves in a victory parade down the Champs-Elysées.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)