I was reading a discussion online the other day, and I noted a brief exchange in which one poster used the phrase "white trash" and a responder said it was a racist epithet. I had never thought of it that way. To me, "white trash" was people characterized by a lack of regard for the niceties of the dominant white culture -vulgar language, lack of basic manners, slovenly dress, disregard for the value of education, poor personal hygiene, and so on. It's certainly a derogatory epithet, but I don't see what's racist about it. Maybe because it excludes people of color who behave that way? I don't know. Seems like a stretch to me.
Surely 99 percent of people who I'd call white trash are racist to a high degree, but that's not a defining characteristic. Some of them are merely I'm-not-racist-butts, people who don't think of themselves as racist when they start sentences with "I'm not racist, but..."and whatever follows you can be sure is racist. That fits with their disdain for education.
It occurs to me that a lot of the people who struggled in school and gave up, along with white trash who never bothered to struggle, makeup the vast majority of diehard Trump supporters. They want to believe the election was stolen, and they want to experience power they never had. They value myth over reality. What did reality ever do for them? In Trump they have a low life who makes his own reality just like they do.
I'm sure a lot of them have parents who employed white trash parenting methods: beating them brutally, mocking them, demeaning them. It would be hard to overcome that even if a young person wanted to.
Easier just to get an AR-15 and march with the Proud Boys.