Tuesday’s Perspectives column was written by my niece, Emily Priddy. In it, she has made an attempt to be funny by taking the low road against her family by declaring us to be white trash. to borrow her own words, I am deeply hurt. I have been told that there will be no retraction, which is sad, considering the wide readership of the DE. There is no way of knowing who has seen this column and been affected it.

I have come to the conclusion that Emily does not know what white trash is. I have assured her that there is no trash in her background. Being born poor does not equate to being trash. I doubt that there have been two finer people who ever walked the earth than her grandparents on both sides, Dorothy Priddy and Murrel Strange. Mrs. Priddy never had a hard word for anyone and always had a ready smile for everybody. Her grandfather’s neck was red, but because he worked hard in the sun to provide a better life for his family. They were both very proud of Emily, as are the rest of her family, proud of her scholastic achievements and abilities. I can only imagine how they would feel if they were alive to read this.

We don’t subsist on Spam. We do not sleep in hair rollers. If some of us wear polyester, it is because we are trying to make our dollars stretch to do the best we can for our kids. Very few of us have had the opportunity to attain a college degree, but that does not make us a bunch of moronic hicks. I’ve never seen a velvet Elvis painting, lava lamps, or a plastic flamingo displayed in the homes of Emily’s family members and it seems unjust to presume to imagine what the ones in the distant past might have been like when they are not here to defend themselves.

Advertisement

If her genetic background does manifest itself, she will find herself to be a capable, witty, and intelligent individual with a strong work ethic. There is nothing trashy about that.