Soft White Underbelly

I am a hillbilly.

No, really. My high school mascot was a Hillbilly. I graduated from Ozark, Arkansas, in 1993 — Home of the Hillbillies. To my knowledge, it is the only school in the country with that mascot.

The West Virginia Mountaineer is a wink and a nod to the hillbilly spirit, but while the WV mascot wears a buckskin outfit and coonskin hat and carries a musket, more of a frontiersman, the Ozark Hillbilly of my alma mater wore torn denim overalls and a worn felt hat and carried a shotgun.

Our Friday night football games were special in that we had a real hillbilly on the sidelines who carried a shotgun and fired a blank into the air after each touchdown. Brother Ted from the local Baptist church still carries on the tradition as far as I know. He ditched the corn cobb pipe and switched the moonshine jug for a bottle of water, though.

Since my graduation over three decades ago, the school officially pictures the mascot unarmed — a wink and a nod in itself to the modern day of school shootings.

Brother Ted Darling. Ozark, Arkansas. Photographer unknown.

One of our school chants was HPRD. It is an acronym for “hillbilly pride runs deep.” And I think that pride truly does run deep — when I mention my mascot from time to time, most might think I am embarrassed of my hometown, but I’m not at all. It is part of who I am, but I think there is a misconception about hillbillies and mountaineers and rednecks and rural people in general.

I am not talking about white trash. That is a different term altogether.

Some of the folks I mentioned could be white trash, but the term is not a default for rural or poor or mountain folk. White trash can be used demonstrably for any white person, regardless of region or income, who acts with rudeness and a lack of civilization and couth.

Born and raised rural and mostly poor, I understand the term “white trash,” and I have spent my life trying to dodge the claim or association. It is one of the most harmful terms that someone stuck in the lower socioeconomic class could be labeled. I knew how not to get caught in the white trash net, because I had something that a lot of folks in my predicament didn’t have: I was born into situational poverty, not generational poverty.

I was the daughter of teenage parents who made a series of mistakes that led us to our place in society, but my grandparents and extended family were educated and as well off as many could hope to be. My parents went on to graduate college and trade school and do better for themselves and for me — we came up out of the poverty that many can’t escape because we knew how to navigate universities and job interviews and the mannerisms of the middle class, though we weren’t considered middle class. We weren’t stuck without a manual.

Situational poverty creates stories. Generational poverty creates despair.

Last week, when I opened my news app to get my daily dose of no good and awful things happening in the country, I saw a strange contraption pictured in an article by the AP. It turned out it was a cage for an UFC fight with the White House in the foreground.

The People’s House was framed by literal violence.

I likely reacted just as you did when you saw the construction of a fight cage on the White House lawn. I had heard it was coming for months, but with a war and gas prices and grocery prices and losing my health insurance due to a lack of ACA subsidies, I didn’t pay much attention to a nearly bare-knuckles fight in our Capitol. I assumed it wouldn’t come to fruition.

I was wrong, but this is where my expertise in all things white trash is helpful in the understanding of the event, which I can say without a doubt, is white trash “culture” held in a place that is meant to create reverence and awe.

It was barbarism on display.

Our nation’s Capitol was defiled and belittled and polluted by a small man dictating violence. A cage fight was held on the ground that represents American Democracy. Men beat and pummeled each other in front of Our House. The entire debacle was a trashy carnival, complete with hate and racism and violence.

The fact that fistfights broke out in the crowd is no surprise, and even less surprising was a statement by a UFC fighter calling Michelle Obama a man.

It is a disgusting conspiracy thrown about by racist, knuckle-dragging, white trash troglodytes…

White trash behavior can come from any socioeconomic spectrum — Donald Trump and his ilk are the embodiment of white trash. They are wealthy, but they display the uncivilized and immoral lawlessness of the term. The stigma of a lower-status, lower-wage person aptly defines the most powerful man in the country and his genre of rich folk…trash.

The term has always been used to target poor and rural people, but what it actually describes is behavior. Trump’s behavior.

When I use the term “white trash,” it is usually self-deprecating, but I see the actual epitome in Donald Trump. The manifestation in his regime. The incarnation in his actions. The personification in his dictatorship.

What happened on the White House South Lawn was not culture, but gross corruption. It was propaganda and blood sport, and it was cheered on by people who confused bare knuckles and physical dominance with strength and leadership.

The nasty voices in this regime claiming to speak for the “real Americans” are the ones who have never respected America.

I may be rural, and a hillbilly to boot, but I am not white trash. Trash is trash, no matter the bank account. The stigma applies to the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

I should know.

~Jess