Movement Afoot To Ban The "W" Word

Scooter Johnson created the group Taking Out the Trash to fight use of the term "white trash."

New Group Fights Use of Term "White Trash"

In the wake of Michael Richard’s racist rant, many prominent black leaders, including Jesse Jackson, have called for the entertainment industry to ban the use of the “N” word. Quietly, however, a movement is also building to fight the use of the term “white trash.”

Scooter Johnson is at the center of that movement as chairman of Taking out the Trash, a small group specifically created to fight a derogatory term generally aimed at poor white people. According to Johnson, “Trash are thrown away. People is not.”

Johnson is particularly sensitive to the term “white trash” because he used to be a trash man. “For three years, I ‘reckon I was ‘round trash fifty hours a week,” he recalled. “Women wouldn’t go near me ‘cause I reeked of trash. Even my trailer smelled like trash. I hate trash. Callin’ me trash, well, them’s fightin’ words.”

Today, Johnson is a sanitation engineer. He drives a truck around and sucks out the contents of porta-potties with a long hose. He doesn’t mind the smells associated with his new job because, as he put it, “I’m used to the smell of my own septic tank; it was never put in right.”

Johnson looked proud yesterday as he sat on the rusting carcass of an old Ford pickup in a weed-infested patch of tall grass by his faded orange trailer. At one point during our conversation, he flashed a wide, toothless grin, picked up a .22 rifle and then shot a squirrel on a nearby tree. “Hooey! There’s lunch for tomorrow,” he remarked as he picked up the dead squirrel and put it in his refrigerator.

Inside his trailer, Johnson launched into a passionate description of his group’s efforts to stop people from using the term “white trash.” When he was done, it was apparent that the group had only one method to discourage people from using the “W” word. Quite simply, all members of Taking Out the Trash pledge to fight anyone heard saying the term.

There really wasn’t anything more that Johnson could say about his group, but before I left, we saw a large rat on his kitchen counter. He quickly picked up a 12-gauge shotgun and shot the rat, leaving a massive hole in the thin wall of his trailer. Then he flashed his wide toothless grin and said, “I’ll just duct-tape a piece of cardboard over that hole.” I looked around, and nearly a quarter of the wall space in his trailer was covered with cardboard and duct-tape.

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