Growing up poor on the wrong side of town, Andy Griffith was once called 'white trash'.

[Elwood P Dowd]

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/07/03/2176821/north-carolina-legend-andy-griffith.html

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While he enjoyed the usual small-town summer delights of rock-kicking, cloud-counting and such, there were enough hard times and spirit-crushing prejudice in that blue-collar Surry County town that once he left, his return visits were few.

He once told show-business biographer Lee Pfeiffer, author of “The Official Andy Griffith Show Scrapbook, “I cannot deny that the person I am was born and raised in Mount Airy, and I was influenced in many ways by that town. I will tell you that it was not all positive. I was actually called ‘white trash’ at one point. That was said by a young girl I was stuck on and she probably wasn’t thinking. And we did come from the wrong side of the tracks. But when she said ‘Get away from me, white trash,’ I did.

“I was only in the fourth grade, and that remark has stuck with me my entire life.”

Not all of his Mount Airy memories were that painful. The Rev. Ed Mickey was pastor of the local Moravian church. One day the gawky kid with the heart-melting grin showed up wanting to learn to play a trombone he’d bought with six dollars he had earned from a part-time job with the Depression-era National Youth Administration. Moravians were known for their brass bands. In two months, the youngster was good enough to play “Moonlight Sonata” in church.
Then Mickey, recognizing he had a talent on his hands, taught the boy to sing. Soon he was singing all over town, sometimes picking up five dollars a show. Mickey went on to recommend him for a scholarship to UNC-Chapel Hill.

No one, at least to his face, would call Andy Griffith “white trash” again.

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[Bandit]

1. Funny I never hear anyone called black trash.......

This is an obvious racial slur IMO and should be drummed from our vocabulary. It basically says blacks are trash and you are so low you are equal to them....

[TalkingDog]

3. How about we acknowledge the class warfare inherent in the term while we are at it?

n/t

[Manifestor_of_Light]

4. I got called N----- trash by a white girl.

In high school.
And I'm white. Really pink, as in "easily sunburned".



No idea where these idiots come from.

[TalkingDog]

5. Now that you mention it, it's been years, but I have heard that term

And it was directed at African Americans. Evidently, in some people's world view their are levels of N****rdom.

I have heard African Americans I worked with divide blacks in to 2 categories: "N" and Black. That was the most shocking thing to me. Sad and shocking.

[TalkingDog]

2. Only once?

I sympathize.