Unmasking the Beast: Learning and Teaching about Whiteness

I've been thinking about the term "White trash" today and how it plays into what we've been talking about. I've always disliked the term "White trash" because I've believed it to be racist on the grounds that it qualifies "trash" with "White," which, given the invisibility of whiteness in general, indirectly states that just plain "trash" is Black... "White trash" seems significant to me in that it is one of the only times in popular discourse when whiteness names itself, when it makes itself visible and steps out from behind the veil of the Unmarked. So then we must ask: What is it about "White trash" that is so extreme that Whiteness dares vulnerability to attack through disclosure? Or more particularly, what is it about "trash"ness in white people that is so offensive it requires linguistic qualification/sequestration from "regular" or "normal" Whiteness? "White trash" is a statement about class, it's a class distinction, namely a lower-class distinction. "White trash" is the marked category so what is the unmarked? Not-White not-trash? No. White trash is pejorative, it's a statement of transgression within Whiteness so we must hold White constant and reverse "trash" so we get, obviously White "not-trash" or White middle class. This has led me to believe that Whiteness is bound up in class distinctions (not "trash"). Whiteness is middle class. So does this mean that "White trash" are not White? Or is it that "White trash" is reluctantly accepted by (middle-class) Whiteness on the grounds that it will be punished for its lower-class status by being reminded how not-middle-class it is, so in a way, how not-White it is, how it fails to meet the aspiration of Whiteness?