My brother has joked about us being white trash for as long as I can remember.

What does that mean to him?  What does it mean to me?

Does it mean the kids who wear mismatched clothes and have dirty faces all of the time?  Does it mean that you're too poor to be able to buy food?  Does it mean that you have a car on blocks in your front yard or that you have a junkyard dog guarding your property?  Are white trash folks the ones that sit out on the front porch (if they are well-enough off to afford a front porch), chewing on tobacco, holding a shotgun to scare others off?  Do we think of Deliverance when we think of white trash?  Or do we think of Bastard out of Carolina?  Is it books and movies that have defined what white trash is to us?

For us, it meant that we shopped at second hand stores (or places where we could get a pair of pants for under $5), we were struggling to find money for food, that we were the kids who were either homeless or had homes that were ridiculed by those we went to school with, and that we were, in general, teased relentlessly by other kids because we weren't able to afford the same things they could.

We were latchkey kids.  We were kids who, while not living on the streets, did struggle.  We had to be little grown-ups because our parents were rarely home because they were working to try to keep us all alive.

Making the joke to call us "white trash" has been something that has really offended our parents.  I think it hurts them because they did struggle.  They did want the best for us.  They were kids themselves, though, and didn't really have the tools or skills to take care of all of us.  They did the best they could.  

We all do the best we can.  If we can survive those struggles, then we become stronger and more resilient.  The alternative isn't pretty.