I am skeptical that Obama will be able to do this effectively in 5 months. Over the course of his Presidency maybe, but if people aren't going to vote for you cause your skin is a little darker, there is little you can do to change their minds in the short term. In the long term yes, and Senator Byrd's endorsement of Obama is a huge opening to begin that process.
Another incisive piece, LM.
OT, though:
Sen. Ted Kennedy Diagnosed With Brain Tumor:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080...n_go_co/
kennedy
Wow, that was beautiful. It's so much easier to mock and scorn than it is to imagine in a heartfelt way what it's like to be inside someone else's skin. Thank you for making the effort, and for expressing it so eloquently. When we can all attempt that, THEN we might start making progress toward becoming one nation, indivisible.
Lm you give a lot of them too much credit...we get taht type in central and southern il..the folsk that joke "thers no klan in our town...they had no busniess left". the folks who think taht "chinks" is an acceptable name for a football team (ok the name changed in the 90's..a very vocla group is tryign to change it back). the folsk who ran me out of small town america with a pickup truck filled with yoklas armed with shotguns (true story).
Had a riend visit from small town indian when I was livign in chicago..his 10 year old daughter looked around as we drove to my palce and with fear in her eyes said "is this one of those towns that only black people live in, my teacher said they would shoot us in places liek this"
the racism is very real, very visiceral, and can be very violent..and the less a minority is seen the more wide spread the fear is (fear is at its hart) the fear of the unknown, the fear of what is diffrent.
Don't give apalica a pass, biggotry had a lot to do with clintons win. it will have a lot to do with how well McCain dose in appalicia. Obama has no chance of changeing them...we may be able to affect their kids, more likely grandkids...travle thrugh the area( well mabey not LM) Ciro Il (pronounced Kaa-Row)is a good facsimily..its like a time warp, they are jsut gettign to the 1960's now...we are a good 25 - 30 years before we start seeign racial tolerance in the area. (had a kind old lady refuse to rent me and my wife an aprtment once, for our own good you understand, see we where an interracial couple adn would get into trouble in the town).
it gets spookie there abouts.
Well put.
When we complain about the Cocktail Culture of the Beltway or the provincialisms of L.A., NYC & other power centers this Appalachian coverage is exactly what it looks like: a parade of stereotypes that serve the time-honored role of the stereotype: it give them (& us) an excuse to leave our brains at the door. The exodus of youth from the region is part of a general brain-drain that doesn't seem all that different from what occurs in other benighted parts of the planet, but it's not just young people who've been leaving that area for decades; gays & lesbians have been fleeing small towns like these for generations.
"... it would appear hard to hate people who aren't there to be hated."
hmmmm ...I saw a piece here earlier about Oregon & it brought to mind the road trips I take every summer. It's an odd thing, we've gone thousands of miles through the South, but it wasn't in Dixie where I found in a little second-hand shop a freshly cleaned tee-shirt from the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan hanging there so innocent among the other promo tees: it was Jacksonville, Oregon.
Is there ANY ration of bullshit that theses assholes won't feed THEMSELVES, along with trying to feed it to everyone else?
The slothful Iowans, who helped Obama start the W.T. Sherman iron-bow-tie party that's he's done on the "H&P RR" (Hillary and PartyHack Railroad)...aided by the huge turnout of "black Iowans"...they aint squat...
All those lazy-ass elitist non-working Virginia honky's, that gave Obama those 134,000 more votes than ALL of the republicans combined.
Not enough.
Same thing with Maryland.
Not enough.
The 25% of white voters in redder-than-Mars South Carolina, who voted for Obama instead of Hillary or Edwards.
Those Fortune 500 WHITE Alabamians who helped the black voters there carry him to a win...
Not enough.
And that huge crowd that he drew in Portland 3 days ago....
What a bunch of welfare-grubbing, food-stamp sucking, n'er-do-well soccer moms and dads, who wouldn't hit a lick at a snake; THOSE bums won't be enough either.
And the REALLY piss-thin logic that Buchanan and Hillary are pimping(and that pairing, for the same message, ought to tell us something!) is that Obama won't pick up many at all of the democrats that have voted for Hillary, but somehow, ALL of HIS support, which has the nomination practically in his grasp, would fall to her like apples off a tree, in the general.
Fuck that.
It is PRECISELY the same kind of shitspeak that we've been hearing from bushCo, for lo, these many years.
No mas.
Shorter Buchanan:
"The last GOP's last lifeboat, Hillary, is heading for Davy Jones' Locker. What must we do?
I know! Let's play the Lester Maddox card! It's always worked in the past."
I'll never forget during the Sago mine disaster when after they found out that all the miners but one was dead they interviewed a woman who looked to be in her late 50s.
Up until then there had been all this hypocritical coverage of people who in any other context would have been labled as ignorant inbred hillbillies but here they were hard-working Christian working class heros.
After tolerating some minutes some standard stupid reporter questioning the woman at one point looked straight into the camera and said "I know you think we're stupid. But we love our families."
It was like a slap in the face. I'll never forget that.
I've careened between sympathy for the people of Appalachia and my own fear and hatred of the racism that they use to prop themselves up.
I haven't quite reached the point where I can forgive the hatred that some so easily spew to make up for what they lack but whenever I think of sneering at those folks I remember the woman in that interview.
"And the REALLY piss-thin logic that Buchanan and Hillary are pimping(and that pairing, for the same message, ought to tell us something!) is that Obama won't pick up many at all of the democrats that have voted for Hillary, but somehow, ALL of HIS support, which has the nomination practically in his grasp, would fall to her like apples off a tree, in the general."
Tanbark, thank you for pointing this out. It NEVER fails to amaze and piss me off when I hear this delusion. It's completely ridiculous and symptomatic of her ongoing denial with the reality of the campaign.
tanbark we have seen a lot of bloggers play that same BS game..obama supporters will fall in line, hillary supporters will go to McCain...this is compleatly devoid of reality. hillarys support coems form long tiem dem votors, all of whom are well sue to holdign there nose and voteign for a canadate thay don't necissarly like. A bulk of Obamas supporters are people like me, with no party affliation per say, right now we are pissed at the republicans, but in the end we want the most progressive canadate, the canadate taht can move our nation forward....
you got one group tath allways votes dem regardless, the other that is flighty, which group is less liekly to show up if their canadate isn't their?
feminists are goign to flock to McCain...pleas, that isn't goign to happen....the racists will, but hillary would have never gotten the racists in the GE anyway.
baltogeek: im glad you can fidn sympathy....when a group of rednecks in the back of a pickup truck waveign shotguns chased me from a town...well i lost any ability to have sympathy for them (passed two twon cops on the way out of town..they jsut waved at the truck as it whent by...this was in 9
....stop in a small town of the express way, walking to the gas station and get called spic, or dot head dependign on which group of brown people they like less....
have every one turn and stare at you when you walk into a resturante...
travle to apalacha once...then tell me if you have sympathy for them.
I have hope for their children, more for the grandchildren and the generation that come after...the current adults area lost cause. Do not romanticse them
And, ONE MORE TIME; let's flip this little situation around, and make it OBAMA who's nearly 200 delegates behind, and with Hillary needing just a hundred and a handful, to clinch, and let HIM be the one who's been giving prostate gland massages to bush, the GOP, and John McCain, for the past 7 years, and have HIM be the one dragging the primary process to the right like he was Karl Rove, while the rest of the country is clearly ready to move back to the middle.
Then, might we not hear a few shreiks of outrage from Clinton and her devoted coronators?
They would be foaming at the mouth, and the MSM would be running 7- minute-long-op-ed pieces about how Obama was tearing the democratic party to shreads.
I say: Don't give her squat to get out. Let her go, and thereby, force Gore, and the rest of the fence-sitting "neutrals", to decide if they want her to be able to string this out even longer, and by so doing, give McCain more time for his free ride.
I think her level of denial rivals george bush's, at this point.
And if that's what she wants to do to her political future, why should Obama offer her money or the VP slot, to stop her from continuing to toot her little George Wallace whistle, as she helps gin up republican talking points.
moonglum, the best description of Appalachia I've read was that it was a 3rd world colonized country right within the borders of the US.
Exploited by capitalists, natural resources taken for the benefit of people who don't live there, not given the proper education or opportunities and left to rot because they aren't the "right" type of people.
I don't pretend that I can ignore the racism and the danger of the bigotry in places like that but I can surely understand what it feels like to be taken advantage of.
That's what I'm responding to.
I've had my own brushes with the ignorant and the evil in small towns (where I live, a suburb that butts up against more rural areas where they still fly the Confederate flag) around here so I understand where you are coming from.
But I'm tired of being afraid and angry at folks who -if we were able to sit down and talk with them without all the bullshit- I probably have more in commmon with that the supposedly enlightened people that I usually encounter (who btw in many cases are just as fucking racist).
The people who are most responsible for my ancestors enslavement and exploitation don't live in Appalachia.
my ancestors unfortunitly ahve a hidtory of beign teh exploiters nto the exploited (nto soemthing to be proud of) this gives me no historical focus for my anger..I will eb angry with the guys who waved guns at me because im brown, for the kids that assuled a women and her 2 year old son just for being black, that is who i reserve my anger for.
it is not my fault that the folks in apalicha have allowed themselves to be heald down...they are the ones who consistantly vote for "right to work" union killing laws, they are teh ones who out of spite hold themselves down time after tiem jsut to make sure no oen else gets a leg up.
Again I ahve hope for teh children..espicaly the ones that escape the area, but the adults there...I have no sympathy and a lot of contempt....I am not afraid of them but will not sit down with them ever.
try expaling to a five year old why that adult is welling "wet back go home" at them some time.....
we never had the racists, we need to stop engageing them and apeasign them....educate theri children, deried and ignore their culture, let them die out, they will be gone in a generation or two....hell treat the poor samll towns like we treat teh projects in teh citys, condem the whole damm palce adn disperse them into better locals...exposure will teach msot of their children tolerance.
Well said, good points and premises
Perfect! That just sums it up LM. Thank you!
I watched a show on teevee the other night called "30 Days". In one episode, the producer and his gf lived on minimum wage jobs in an Ohio town and it was very enlightening for folks who don't get how impossible that is.
The next episode had a minuteman live for 30 days with an illegal immigrant family in east LA. He even visted the man's brother/family in Mexico to see where they had "lived". At the end he was changed. He did not go back to the minutemen and really understood the many faceted problem this is. He was also a legal immegrant from cuba and it made it easier for him to understand and more difficult for him to reconcile the "illegal" part of the equation.
There's one about the coal miners but I didn't see it... yet. I'm going to be watching for it though. Doesn't something like 75% of the electricity in this country come from coal? There IS a total lack of respect for what they do and yes, the coal company likes it that way. Control.
Its the playing up the stereotypes that gets people like the clintons and buchanans off. Its the main reason for Obama's appeal I think. People are tired of it, more every day.
Awhile ago I was amazed to find people in KY fighting against Bushco, against the war, and they're FOR Obama. http://www.hillbillyreport.com/
Just last week I ran across a song written from the perspective of slave deciding to make a run to escape slavery and fight for freedom.... sung by, and maybe partially written by a man from KY, but for sure written by people who could easily be perceived as "hillbillies". So, I think its changing but we do have to look more closely at the human beings behind all stereotypes/labels.
Buchanan really has been just so out of step with what's going on in this election. He's a fool who I cannot abide on there..... just loony toons.
All people deserve sympathy but those in Appalachia strain my patience. They vote against their own economic interest, proudly stand against progress and cling to archaic ideas about race. So I'm sort of settling in on moonglum's side of this... certainly the things that divide us are not about race as much as about economic class. I don't look down at them, just wish they would wise up to being used by corpratists and Republicans.
"Writing these people off" isn't the thing to do, though."
Write the state off in terms of electoral votes, since the Electoral College system is broken. Unfortunately, it won't be fixed in time for November.
But don't write off the popular vote. West Virgina, Kentucky, Mississippi, Wyoming and like are all part of a 50-state strategy, and the Dems will need to make a better than normal showing in the popular vote to offset the gross distortion of the Electoral results and the attendant GOP popular vote supression tactics.
After accepting that, it's a question of application of resources in these states. Focus on the college towns and the large urban areas. Focus on union-friendly industrial and resource towns, too. And focus on winning the down-ticket races where possible. But for the next few cycles, the Dems have to stop expecting to win the backward states in Presidential elections.
So yes, this year the Dems will have to write off the votes of those afflicted with the ignorant and desperate bitterness you describe, since they're as likely to vote for an African American as they are for a woman. The Dems have to stop wasting time and resources trying to appeal to to these "hard-working, white, Americans" who (as Obama pointed out more diplomatically) take refuge in religious fantaticism and Second Amendment Black Helicopter fantasies.
Coal can be turned into diamonds, but it's a long, slow process. "Pressure and time." Take control of Congress and the White House, address the very real needs of Edwards' "other America," and we might start mitigating the hopeless and racist peasant mentality that the corporate masters of Appalachia have instilled in many of their rural citizens. Then maybe the serfs will see the benefit of voting in their own interest instead of against it.
On the whole, these people are not garden-variety racist in the practice of their day-to-day lives. In fact, considering their isolation from Black folks, racism is probably quite the non-factor in everyday life. -LM
This is one of the few areas where we'll have to agree to disagree LoLo.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/20...4/8345/3/
514593
as usual, LM, a masterful and extremely thought provoking piece. it stirs up a lot of thoughts from deep inside. i read "born fighting," jim webb's book on the scots/irish who make up the main population of that region. also recommended is "albion's seed" by david hacket fisher. the scots/irish were imported to this country by the cavalier society of virginia, by the catholic upper class of maryland, by the quakers of pennsylvania for the purpose of securing the mountain passes of the frontier. the folks on the seaboard figured that if the indians needed to fight through the scots/irish, who brought with them their clan structure and their firm understanding of the blood feud there would be safer nights along the coast.
there's a lot to admire, but also a lot to give one pause. i remember bobby kennedy making his life changing trip the the hill country of eastern kentucky and west virginia. he was forever affected and changed by what he saw there. had he lived, who knows? maybe he would have been able to make a difference.
coal and diamonds. something about being able to pull pure carbon from the earth has a usually horrific effect on the lives of those topside. had the coal mines of the region never been found, had they over the eons turned into diamonds maybe they would have reached the same richness and cultural levels of the diamond mines of africa. . .
he's a poor boy
empty as a pocket
empty as a pocket
got nothing to lose
baltogeek, that story of the woman really got to me.
LM this piece is fantastic. Big hearted, honest, and full of truth and hope at the same time.
important as we head into the votes today and prepare for all the spin that shall ensue.
You folks are great.
I'm the descendant of an anthracite coal miner, never met him, he died in the mines. Most of the great uncles and some of the uncles on that side of the family were miners. I have a lot of sympathy for those still living that life, but the ongoing levels of racism in many {but not all} of those regions is hard to accept as forgivable or understandable. And let's not forget that there is a lot of other work going on in Appalachia, it isn't just coal extraction.
I do think there is some hope somewhere in the future, certainly not in the next ten years though. An infiltration of some sort of education that lifts that society above a whole catalog of ignorance is going to be needed and let's look at another sad reality. Appalachia is not the only place in the US that is marked by an entirely inadequate educational level and very limited employment opportunities. That problem is expanding and will reach epidemic proportions during the next 5 years.
Cities have had this problem for decades, and with the coming tax crises in the suburbs, the same is about to occur there.
That's what ought to be addressed in addition to the racism and the exploitation dynamics.
moonglum:
I understand exactly what you mean. The lowest of the low go all-out with obvious “fuck you” racism. I've gotten that damn near—be it a little town outside Waycross, Georgia where a bunch of “Cooters” seeing me outside of my car changing a tire, decided to swerve towards me and toss their fast-food leavings and beer empties out of a moving truck at me, all while howling laughing, fuck-fingering and screaming “N*gger!” as the flew by, or the crazed lunatics who chased me under the Elevated “J” train in Woodhaven, Queens with bats and tire irons.
It will be many years from now when my limbs are stiff and my eyes rheumy before I let go of my resentment over that shit. But I've seen blunt-force racism where it was my mere “melanated” presence that set people off, and I've also seen people who I was sure as shootin' were of the “lynch first, ask a n*gg*r his name later” school, and found them to be something else again. Without going into the whole “nature vs. nurture” shpiel, I think where one hails from can have a lot to do with one's prism on race. In my few times shucking it through Appalachia (West Virginia specifically) it was my own nervousness that upset me, moreso than any way I was treated.
Doc B:
I know I sound a little bit utopian, but to elaborate on what I was going into with mg, in my instances of dealing in the region, I had the chance to talk with several locals who simply shared with me about life there. These were people I met the day I spoke to 'em and they were plain-spoken and honest with me. It was one gentleman I found myself talking to while waiting at a post office who lyrically told me about it being a place where “we tear the guts out of God's earth, and rip out it's scalp...and I guess we pay for it with the hell we go through”. I engaged this man longer than I normally would have, almost waiting for him to live down to what I was conditioned to think of him,
But he didn't. His name was Emil as I recall.
The folks I came across there were kind to me—kinder than they have been in other places much closer to home here in NYC. That's not to say that once I got out of earshot that they didn't mumble “n*gg*r”. But face-to-face, these people were real with me and shared. I sat in a little restaurant in Fayetteville, WV having breakfast one morning and ordered a corned beef hash special. The signs in the place were home-made and kind of rough, and I had some difficulty reading the price on the paper plate promos. The man behind the counter noted my problem with the crudely done sign and joked about it. There was a Sharpie™ at the counter's edge and I sketched a quick re-do of the sign for him to follow. I used to be a professional sign painter and the sketch was pretty tight. The man was amazed. So I asked him if he had a highlighter marker and a spare plate, and proceeded to do the sign right there. It took about two minutes and he was beside himself with glee as I hand-letterd it for him.
“Man!” he said. “That's beautiful!”
So I re-did the remaining five signs he had done up the same way in about fifteen minutes.
“No. Oh my God. Aw man! Lookit here! They're beautiful!” he kept going.
When I was done with the signs and my breakfast and coffee, he asked me what I would charge him. “No charge”, I told him.
“You're kiddin' me.”
“Nope. Didn't take me long to do 'em. Enjoy.”
“Well. The breakfast is on the house, but...man, you did five signs. I mean, that's a steal for a breakfast...man, that's the nicest thing! I can't believe it!”
“Aaaaah, don't mention it.”, I said. And this guy was almost teary looking at the signs. he shook my hand and hugged me as I left my stool. He kept saying “Nobody does this kinda thing. Nobody.”
And as I was in front gathering things up in the car to leave, he rushed to the door, holding a cordless phone aloft and yelling “My wife is sayin' ''Thank you!'
I yelled “you're welcome” as I pulled out. I hope she heard me. 
Obama Til Denver:
Oh yes, I'm talking about long-term in fixing Appalachia. It probably won't be in play for several election cycles. But yes, I mean getting that place better in the Bobby Kennedy mold of really beginning to deal with the century-plus of neglect in effect.
Baltogeek described it thusly:
the best description of Appalachia I've read was that it was a 3rd world colonized country right within the borders of the US.
Exploited by capitalists, natural resources taken for the benefit of people who don't live there, not given the proper education or opportunities and left to rot because they aren't the "right" type of people.
That's an awful something that we as a nation need to honestly work at rectifying. Along with Mississippi's vomit-inducing version of Appalachia's issue of forced, institutionalized poverty—with racism as the ugly prism it's shot through.
When I say “don't write them off”, I'm not talking about electorally. I mean not continuing the shunting off that's isolated and twisted them to where they will vote against their common sense interests.
Maybe I've been watching too much old Bobby Kennedy footage.
moonglum:
I understand exactly what you mean. The lowest of the low go all-out with obvious “fuck you” racism. I've gotten that damn near—be it a little town outside Waycross, Georgia where a bunch of “Cooters” seeing me outside of my car changing a tire, decided to swerve towards me and toss their fast-food leavings and beer empties out of a moving truck at me, all while howling laughing, fuck-fingering and screaming “N*gger!” as the flew by, or the crazed lunatics who chased me under the Elevated “J” train in Woodhaven, Queens with bats and tire irons.
It will be many years from now when my limbs are stiff and my eyes rheumy before I let go of my resentment over that shit. But I've seen blunt-force racism where it was my mere “melanated” presence that set people off, and I've also seen people who I was sure as shootin' were of the “lynch first, ask a n*gg*r his name later” school, and found them to be something else again. Without going into the whole “nature vs. nurture” shpiel, I think where one hails from can have a lot to do with one's prism on race. In my few times shucking it through Appalachia (West Virginia specifically) it was my own nervousness that upset me, moreso than any way I was treated.
Doc B:
I know I sound a little bit utopian, but to elaborate on what I was going into with mg, in my instances of dealing in the region, I had the chance to talk with several locals who simply shared with me about life there. These were people I met the day I spoke to 'em and they were plain-spoken and honest with me. It was one gentleman I found myself talking to while waiting at a post office who lyrically told me about it being a place where “we tear the guts out of God's earth, and rip out it's scalp...and I guess we pay for it with the hell we go through”. I engaged this man longer than I normally would have, almost waiting for him to live down to what I was conditioned to think of him,
But he didn't. His name was Emil as I recall.
The folks I came across there were kind to me—kinder than they have been in other places much closer to home here in NYC. That's not to say that once I got out of earshot that they didn't mumble “n*gg*r”. But face-to-face, these people were real with me and shared. I sat in a little restaurant in Fayetteville, WV having breakfast one morning and ordered a corned beef hash special. The signs in the place were home-made and kind of rough, and I had some difficulty reading the price on the paper plate promos. The man behind the counter noted my problem with the crudely done sign and joked about it. There was a Sharpie™ at the counter's edge and I sketched a quick re-do of the sign for him to follow. I used to be a professional sign painter and the sketch was pretty tight. The man was amazed. So I asked him if he had a highlighter marker and a spare plate, and proceeded to do the sign right there. It took about two minutes and he was beside himself with glee as I hand-letterd it for him.
“Man!” he said. “That's beautiful!”
So I re-did the remaining five signs he had done up the same way in about fifteen minutes.
“No. Oh my God. Aw man! Lookit here! They're beautiful!” he kept going.
When I was done with the signs and my breakfast and coffee, he asked me what I would charge him. “No charge”, I told him.
“You're kiddin' me.”
“Nope. Didn't take me long to do 'em. Enjoy.”
“Well. The breakfast is on the house, but...man, you did five signs. I mean, that's a steal for a breakfast...man, that's the nicest thing! I can't believe it!”
“Aaaaah, don't mention it.”, I said. And this guy was almost teary looking at the signs. he shook my hand and hugged me as I left my stool. He kept saying “Nobody does this kinda thing. Nobody.”
And as I was in front gathering things up in the car to leave, he rushed to the door, holding a cordless phone aloft and yelling “My wife is sayin' ''Thank you!'
I yelled “you're welcome” as I pulled out. I hope she heard me.
Obama Til Denver:
Oh yes, I'm talking about long-term in fixing Appalachia. It probably won't be in play for several election cycles. But yes, I mean getting that place better in the Bobby Kennedy mold of really beginning to deal with the century-plus of neglect in effect.
Baltogeek described it thusly:
the best description of Appalachia I've read was that it was a 3rd world colonized country right within the borders of the US.
Exploited by capitalists, natural resources taken for the benefit of people who don't live there, not given the proper education or opportunities and left to rot because they aren't the "right" type of people.
That's an awful something that we as a nation need to honestly work at rectifying. Along with Mississippi's vomit-inducing version of Appalachia's issue of forced, institutionalized poverty—with racism as the ugly prism it's shot through.
When I say “don't write them off”, I'm not talking about electorally. I mean not continuing the shunting off that's isolated and twisted them to where they will vote against their common sense interests.
Maybe I've been watching too much old Bobby Kennedy footage.
LM:
Thanks for your post. I'm one of the thousands who fled Appalachia just as fast as I could get.
Yes, parts of it are scarily racist (as well as sexist, and wildly homophobic--which is why this white lesbian fled). But if your "kin," folks will literally give you their shirt off their back or their last dollar. And there are parts that are deeply progressive.
How the hell did FDR thrive in these areas?
McCain is Bush lite, and is loathed across the board. While his military experience is deeply respected, he's seen as Bush's bulldog. And the endless war in Iraq has devastated families.
Obama and the dems need to talk about issues that resonate to poor people in general, and Appalachin folks in particular.
1. A living wage.
2. Universal health care.
3. Access to health care. Health crises are deadly when the local hospital is both substandard and 21 miles away.
4. Innovation in technology and services. Rural electrification was the last "real big deal." Perhaps Rural Broadband would be the way to go.
I think the Dems have a real opportunity to change politics as we know it this year. But they need to come up with some plans for better in Appalachia. Folks will listen, if you give them a chance.
>How the hell did FDR thrive in these areas?
They were starving to death. He promised to feed people and then did.
That sort of thing tends to leave a impact.
I hear you LoLo, but I've spent some time in both Mississippi & W. Virginia. Both are shitheaps of bigotry and inbred ignorance and I preferred Mississippi. Comparatively speaking, that is...
Lower Manhattanite you need to get out more. Drop the stupid kumbaya fantasies. Those folks in Appalachia are raw racists and they will do a number on your ass if you go visit them.
I watched a film last week about a transracial miners strike that happened in the county that gave us dueling Hatfields & McCoys. It was a good film that showed how the Appalachian miners rallied and formed bonds with Black & Italian miners who they initially despised and hated.
Despite seeing that film and knowing that the folks in the Appalachians have a raw deal I say tell it to the first peoples (I don't like the term Native American since American is a European name). Also they can keep feeling better about being caucasian if it helps them sleep better at night. However if white folks want to form coalitions with them may the god I don't believe in bless them.
The Christian Appalachian Project does many things to help the luckless people of Appalachia.
www.christianapp.org
Wow, LM, just wow. And baltogeek - whoa.
Historical note on coal country: coal was a protected industry during WWII; those folks weren't drafted b/c they were needed in the mines.
So they didn't get the GI Bill the rest of the country got in the 40s and 50s. Never got out to see what the rest of the world was like. *
This is what the USA looks like without part of the New Deal.
This is the BushMcCain/neocon vision for our country.
*Compare to one Jessica Lynch of West Virginia, who joined the Army to get money for college. In the Army, Jessica's best friend was a Native American from Texas, and presumably that's where she met the Hispanic guy she was engaged to for a while.
Aviva - Jessica's best friend was a Native American from Tuba City, Arizona. Lori Piestewa.
Thanks for the correction, Myrtle June.
It was Lori Piestewa I was thinking of, and I should have specified her name anyhow, particularly since Memorial Day is coming up.
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