White trash. Trailer Trash. People of Wall mart.

[MadrasT]

68. I grew up in a fairly privileged middle class home.

My father was a university professor.

My parents were forever looking down on "poor people" as if they were somehow less worthy of being alive, and they told me straight up more than once that "those people" were not the kind of people I should have as friends.

It pissed me right the fuck off and I had *way* more friends "from the wrong side of the track" than from families of our own social class.

To this day I simply cannot stand people who trash talk people just because they are poor, or uneducated, or live in simple homes.

THEY ARE PEOPLE, people who are just as important and worthy as all the status-conscious assholes running around in their SUVs and BMWs going home to their ridiculous McMansions with pools and perfect lawns.

(My mother told me not long ago that looking back, the thing I told her long ago that had the most impression on her still, was that people were not "less than" just because they lived in a trailer. I think she eventually got it.)

Both my parents grew up rather poor - my dad was *especially* poor growing up. As in "no heat in the winter sometimes and mayonnaise sandwiches for lunch if you're lucky" poor. Maybe their attitude in adulthood was trying to put distance between their past and the present? Like trying to insulate themselves against it happening again?



Nobody better be trashing on people experiencing poverty in my presence. It will not end well.