How to Use poor white in a Sentence

poor white

noun
  • The goal was to limit the ability of African Americans to vote; these restrictions likewise disfranchised many poor whites.
    — Time, 29 Oct. 2025
  • In plain English, a poor white neighborhood and a poor Black neighborhood have more in common with each other than either does with a wealthy neighborhood.
    — Darvio Morrow, MSNBC Newsweek, 25 Aug. 2025
  • Jennette McCurdy, in particular, rose from the same poor white background as Temple and was driven by the same sort of stage mother.
    — Adam Gopnik, New Yorker, 20 Oct. 2025
  • The lyrics went beyond Evers’ white-supremacist killer, indicting an entire system that brainwashed poor white Southerners into hatred.
    — Brian Hiatt, Rolling Stone, 1 Feb. 2026
  • In the 1890s, at the height of the Gilded Age, Southern states rewrote their constitutions to disenfranchise poor whites and Black citizens alike, specifically to crush the rising Populist movement.
    — Sarita Gupta, Time, 2 June 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'poor white.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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