Editorial: Why liberals OK with shaming Appalachia?

[mountaineer]

Editorial: Why liberals OK with shaming Appalachia?
April 23, 2017
Roanoke Times
Excerpted - click on link for entire editorial.

There’s apparently one group of people that it’s safe – perhaps even fashionable – to slur.

That would be people living in Appalachia.

In the past few weeks, though, there’s been a spate of articles in liberal publications aimed at Appalachia, effectively saying Democrats should ignore the region because it voted heavily for Donald Trump. That’s a fairly antiseptic political point, but the language they’ve used is more provocative – and, to some, offensive.

“No Sympathy For The Hillbilly,” was the headline in New York magazine. Writer Frank Rich said Democrats who are making the case that they could do a better job of appealing to rural voters are suffering an “outbreak of Hillbilly Chic.”

Instead, Rich urged Democrats to ignore those voters: “Let them reap the consequences for voting against their own interests . . . They’ll keep voting against their own interests until the industrial poisons left unregulated by their favored politicians finish them off altogether.”

Curiously – and perhaps tellingly – Rich never even mentioned Appalachia. Instead, he used “hillbilly” as the way to describe white, working-class voters everywhere, rural or otherwise. It was just a useful, go-to word to conjure up the image he preferred.

Let’s pause here and say a few words about that word “hillbilly.” Is it a slur? That’s complicated. It’s not a slur on the level of certain other words we can imagine but won’t use. It’s a word that J.D. Vance pointedly used in the title of his best-seller “Hillbilly Elegy.” On the other hand, context matters. There are some words we can use to describe ourselves that we don’t want other people using.

Last summer, the Tazewell County-born writer Chelyen Davis – who authors The Homesick Appalachian website – tackled this very question. “When an outsider says ‘hillbilly’ snidely, I hear “stupid” and “backwards.” I love being from Appalachia, but living outside it now, I often feel I’m defending myself against that stereotype,” Davis wrote. “The best I can say is this: if you ask me if I’m a hillbilly, I might say yes. If you call me one, I’ll be mad.”  ...

Kevin Baker didn’t use the word in his New Republic piece “The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless White Mind,” in which he wrote about Bernie Sanders’ recent town hall meeting in McDowell County, West Virginia. Still, he said people in Appalachia don’t understand the modern world: “The people of Trump Country, like so much of white America, long for a past that never was, and a future that cannot be. A past cleansed of conflict, where a big, paternalistic company gave them nice things if they worked hard. A future where, who knows, maybe an orange-haired grifter really will restore everything to the way it allegedly was back in their parents’ time because … well, because he said he would.”

A community leader in Charlotte, North Carolina, took that a step further. We recently published an editorial pointing out that Trump wants to eliminate the Appalachian Regional Commission, the agency that has helped pay for infrastructure improvements in some counties that supported him heavily. The national Democratic Party tweeted a link to our editorial. James Ford, the co-chair of a Charlotte task force on economic development, replied: “There may yet be redemption for them & an oppty [opportunity] to join the struggle. But they must disavow white supremacy. That ideology keeps them stuck.”

So Appalachia now equates with white supremacy? Really? Why is it so socially acceptable to paint an entire region as racist rubes in Klan robes?

The liberal website Salon did, at least, weigh in with: “Liberal shaming of Appalachia: Inside the media elite’s obsession with the ‘hillbilly problem.” Tennessee historian Elizabeth Catte provides this cutting insight: “This genre trades on a bad-faith sleight of hand that displaces the reality that the average Trump voter is a college-educated white individual of some means, not a ‘hillbilly.’ The sole reason for this genre’s existence is to provide the liberal elite with the means to feel superior to poor people, of all races, without sounding like Jason Chaffetz.”

We’re not going to defend Trump, especially when we’re the ones pointing out how his policies hurt the very region that backed him so strongly. But we will defend Appalachia against facile slurs that are so easily rebutted by old-fashioned facts.

• Appalachia equals white supremacy? ... 

• Appalachia equals backward? ...
Appalachia is more complicated, more nuanced, than it appears to the outside eye. But there’s nothing complicated about not wanting to be mocked, insulted, stereotyped and slurred.

[Idaho_Cowboy]

Can someone tell me. Is it app-uh-latch-a or app-uh-lay-shuh?

[Sanguine]

I know we all like blond jokes, but a good case could be made that they fall into the same category as this story.  Where it used to be socially acceptable to make all kinds of racist/ethnic jokes against Poles, Jews, blacks, hispanics, whatevers, those have become socially toxic.  For some reason, it's still OK to make jokes about rednecks, hillbillys and blonds.  As we know, rednecks got that nickname because they work outside, in all kinds of weather, and they get red necks from the sun. They do the work that hipsters wouldn't and couldn't do.  Hillbillys?  We wouldn't be the country that we are without them.  Without their pioneering, can-do, make-it-work spirit we'd still be New England.  And, blonds - wow, using a physical descriptor to make fun of a racial/ethnic type?  I thought that was totally off limits?

[mirraflake]

Can someone tell me. Is it app-uh-latch-a or app-uh-lay-shuh?

Either.  I am from Appalachia and have heard it both ways from the hillbillys (not using that as a slur)in my area.

I can drive 10 miles and still find people living without electricity or county water when you really get  back in the hollar-where the gravel roads turns to dirt. They use coal furnaces to heat and have a well. Many don't have full time jobs but scrounge for aliving. Collect up old scrap steel to sell etc.


A 90+ year old woman in our area recently had a bathroom installed first time in her life by a Habitat for Humanity type of group. Used an out house all her life.
@Idaho_Cowboy

[Cripplecreek]

Its not just Appalachia. Its pretty much anyplace that isn't liberal like them.

I live in Jackson county Michigan right next to Washtenaw county and Ann Arbor. They call us "Jacksatucky" out of the belief that they're insulting us.

I point out that Einstein was married to his cousin.

[Wingnut]

@Sanguine

Don't forget the Irish in your list of those you can insult!. 

_{Someone reading this just mumbled:
"ah prairie shit"}

[Idaho_Cowboy]

Either.  I am from Appalachia and have heard it both ways from the hillbillys (not using that as a slur)in my area.

I can drive 10 miles and still find people living without electricity or county water when you really get  back in the hollar-where the gravel roads turns to dirt. They use coal furnaces to heat and have a well. Many don't have full time jobs but scrounge for aliving. Collect up old scrap steel to sell etc.


A 90+ year old woman in our area recently had a bathroom installed first time in her life by a Habitat for Humanity type of group. Used an out house all her life.
@Idaho_Cowboy

Thanks. I told one as a youngster from someone that ought to know and then heard it the other way from a local (but thought maybe he was just pulling my leg).

There's redneck and then there's hillbilly. Reckon you find folks like that all over "fly-over" country.

[Sanguine]

@Sanguine

Don't forget the Irish in your list of those you can insult!. 

_{Someone reading this just mumbled:
"ah prairie shit"}

Yes, there's some kind of theme there....

[jmyrlefuller]

Easy—because Appalachians can't be corrupted. There's a vein of pride and independence in this part of the country that no amount of government bribery will win over. They've lived lives of poverty, and survived without help. The only reason the left sees them as contemptful is because they can't crush that spirit among these people.

[mirraflake]

Easy—because Appalachians can't be corrupted. There's a vein of pride and independence in this part of the country that no amount of government bribery will win over. They've lived lives of poverty, and survived without help. The only reason the left sees them as contemptful is because they can't crush that spirit among these people.

90% of the poor appalachian people in my area are on some type of gov't assistance.

@jmyrlefuller

[Free Vulcan]

Here's the rub:

“The people of Trump Country, like so much of white America, long for a past that never was, and a future that cannot be. A past cleansed of conflict, where a big, paternalistic company gave them nice things if they worked hard.

Like usual, liberals project and try to call it analysis. But what is their answer? Pseudo-educated urban elitism? How's that working out for the millenals with worthless degrees, a saggy entry level job market, and tons of debt? Hyper technical advancement and automation, where none but the technogeek has any chance of striking gold?

Their idea of an economy is so narrow these days that they are literally creating their own 1% of employable elite, living on the coasts, and the rest scrapping along in menial service jobs or welfare. Flyover country? What's that?  Do they expect us to take the Goldfinger route and just die?

Yes, they do.

[don-o]

Can someone tell me. Is it app-uh-latch-a or app-uh-lay-shuh?

In my neck of the woods, natives say latch and furriners (or those in thrall to them) say lay.

[Millee]

Because they're elitist scum? 

[The_Reader_David]

Why?  Because folks in Applachia tend to be pious protestant Christians, and hatred of the Gospel is the most fundamental commitment of the left, and has been since the days when it got that name from the seating arrangement in the French National Assembly.

Almost all inconsistencies the left exhibits come down to hatred of Christianity -- bigotry is forbidden, except for anti-Christian bigotry; the double-think needed to champion "gay rights" and support unfettered immigration of Muslims who think capital punishment for homosexuality is much to be desired.  Any two contradictory positions can be held by a liberal, so long as they are both anti-Christian (or is that Antichristian?).

[truth_seeker]

In 1996 I visited the small Big Horn County, Wyoming town, where my grandmother was born in 1901. My father born there too, in 1926.

The visit's purpose was to memorialize my grandmother and bury her among her ancestors in the town cemetery.

I spoke briefly about her origins, telling the group that while our father moved us away, he kept the small Western town values in his family.

In 1920 the population was 687, and in 2010 it was 655.

[Doug Loss]

Some years ago, James Carville described Pennsylvania (much of which is the northern end of Appalachia) as "Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, separated by Alabama."  He thought he was insulting the folks in PA outside of those two cities, but most everyone there said, 

[Idaho_Cowboy]

In my neck of the woods, natives say latch and furriners (or those in thrall to them) say lay.

Thanks!

[mountaineer]

More Briefing Room threads on "hillbilly" mentality here and here.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

90% of the poor appalachian people in my area are on some type of gov't assistance.

@jmyrlefuller

Yep. Was just about to point that out. Lots of red states have huge numbers on disability too.

Elitism and hypocrisy can come from both sides.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Here's the rub:

Like usual, liberals project and try to call it analysis. But what is their answer? Pseudo-educated urban elitism? How's that working out for the millenals with worthless degrees, a saggy entry level job market, and tons of debt? Hyper technical advancement and automation, where none but the technogeek has any chance of striking gold?

Their idea of an economy is so narrow these days that they are literally creating their own 1% of employable elite, living on the coasts, and the rest scrapping along in menial service jobs or welfare. Flyover country? What's that?  Do they expect us to take the Goldfinger route and just die?

Yes, they do.

It's not really their idea of the economy, it's the economy's idea of the economy. Automation is the wave of the future.

[mountaineer]

90% of the poor appalachian people in my area are on some type of gov't assistance.

True in my area. Sen Robert C. Sheets Byrd endeavored to make his state dependent on the federal government.  He succeeded.

[jmyrlefuller]

90% of the poor appalachian people in my area are on some type of gov't assistance.

@jmyrlefuller

And yet they're still not voting Democrat, are they?

[Silver Pines]

Some years ago, James Carville described Pennsylvania (much of which is the northern end of Appalachia) as "Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, separated by Alabama."  He thought he was insulting the folks in PA outside of those two cities, but most everyone there said, 

@Doug Loss

Ironic, when Carville looks like he might have been sired as a result of a union between close relatives.

[Free Vulcan]

It's not really their idea of the economy, it's the economy's idea of the economy. Automation is the wave of the future.

Is it? It's the decision of very large capital intensive companies, but it's also being funneled and shaped by govt policies that reward those kind of companies and decisions.

[bolobaby]

I am involved with an Appalachian mission project. Everyone needs to understand that Appalachia is NOT what liberal Hollywood types would like you to believe it is. The communities are often very close knit, due to the fact that the mountainous terrain allows only enough room for a stream, a road, railroad tracks, and a row of houses. On either side of that is sheer mountainside which cannot support buildings.

The most disgusting thing to me is that Democratic policies are destroying the people of Appalachia. The liberals send in just enough aid for people to persist in place as their world crumbles down around them. On one recent food delivery run, we pulled up and the woman who runs the pantry opened the storage shed, pointed to 4 cases of canned vegetables, and said, "Don't mix up what you've brought with what the government sent *for the month*. I have to keep that separate."

Bear in mind we are talking about 96 cans of vegetables. For the month.

We opened that trailer and started unloading. When she saw what we had brought, and it immediately became clear that her shed would barely fit our haul without stacking it from floor to ceiling, the phrase "Praise Jesus" was heard dozens of times. A couple people got choked up. Needless to say, there was no way to keep our food from not BURYING the 96 cans the government lovingly sent.

Afterwards, we talk a bit about Trump. Those folks want to work. They want the coal jobs back. Libtards can complain about the health conditions of working in coal, but they have no idea how unhealthy it is for these people and their families to be living in abject poverty, without enough food, and in homes that are barely standing in some cases.

I stand with the hillbillies of Appalachia. Screw the liberal writers.