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Poor White
United States social caste and ethnic group / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Poor White is a sociocultural classification used to describe economically disadvantaged Whites in the English-speaking world, especially White Americans with low incomes.
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![]() Portrayals of Poor Whites in U.S. state of Georgia, as illustrated by E. W. Kemble, circa 1891 | |
Regions with significant populations | |
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Southern United States | |
Related ethnic groups | |
White Southerners, Mountain white, White Americans |
In the United States, Poor White is the historical classification for an American sociocultural group,[1] of generally Western and/or Northern European descent, with many being in the Southern United States and Appalachia regions. They were first classified as a social caste[2][3] in the Antebellum South,[4] consisting of white, agrarian, economically disadvantaged laborers or squatters, who usually owned neither land nor slaves.[5][6][7]
In the British Commonwealth, the term was historically used to describe lower-class whites,[8][9] notably in the context of the "poor white problem" in South Africa.[10][11] The term has also been occasionally used in a British context since the second half of the 20th century to distinguish poor white Britons from lower-class Black and Asians in Britain.[12][13]