Please correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't President cut funding that helped with transportation in this region?
Marcus
· 1 year ago
F them. If they want to improve their situation, they need to WAKE UP and get with the rest of us. I don't mean to be mean or harsh or insensitive. I grew up poor in the 70s and 80s in inner-city New York. If (SOME) of these Appalachia folk continue to vote AGAINST their best interest, because they refuse to get out of their "fear box" and not support Obama, then they deserve to stay in the conditions they are in. Again, I don't mean to be harsh or mean, b/c I grew up poor, too. But at some point, you have to realize that you CAN NOT keep doing the same thing over and over or voting for the same people over and over and expect a different result. Sorry.
gab
· 1 year ago
...this goes a bit deeper than f..k 'em.
Why such racism among Appalachians?
a) Like the Irish, they came to believe blacks were competition for jobs, education and skills--whether they were in slavery or not. BTW, western Virginia was more or less anti-slavery--until after the Civil War.
b) Scots Irish became more for racial purity, especially DURING Reconstruction. They have a bone to pick with the pure Irish, who consider their intermarrying with the Scots as harmful to the race, and watering down resistance to their common enemy, the English. They were also Protestants rather than Catholic. However, the fiercely independent and nonconformist mountain people were being equated as being like Sambos by the time Reconstruction ended. This was an insult, and if they were acting like Hatfields and McCoys already, this made them even more hypersensitive. In short, they were the equivalent of "white Negroes." "Appalachian Anglo Saxons began to replace blacks in the national awareness," so says William H. Turner in his paper, Blacks in Appalachian America: Reflections on Biracial Education and Unionism which came out in Phylon, a magazine put out by Clark-Atlanta University in 1983, because abolitionists and other social activists had tired on black suffrage and aims.
I leave it to you to find this paper and others...(smile)
TruthSeeker
· 1 year ago
I once read in the Caribbean during slavery, the Irish were given the most dangerous tasks on a plantation. They were considered to be worth less than African slaves because they were not seen as physically resilient. I thought back then, that it would create a degree of solidarity between the two groups...but, maybe not.
Christopher Chambers
· 1 year ago
Hillary has opened up an evil Pandora's Box in WVA with this "hardworking white people crap." It's a page from the Democratic Party of 1856-1964. Given that her and Obama's policy choices aren't far apart, then race and race only is the reason this folk don't back him and it is endemic of the bubble Axelrod lives in that the O. Camp has yet to address this head on. Either Hillary is lying to herself or these folk--they will abandon the party because somebody with similiar views is the nominee, and not Hillary? This could have been better played and the issue aired out sooner before Hillary and pundits got hold and twisted it.
Of course, these white folks themselves need to take a long look in the mirror.
Loni Elder
· 1 year ago
Why is everyone so shocked that many hillbillies from the Appalachians in W. Virginia are so racist and most likely won't go out on a limb to vote for the first black President???
Have any of you seen Deliverance? He could probably do without the incestous back forrest rape lobby anyhow.
Lolo
· 1 year ago
I truly wish that more people were covering the key difference between the numbers of "blue collar working white people" who have voted for Obama and the "Appalachian" voters. Big difference, obviously.
Personally, I think it's much more beneficial for him to target the older white women who are extremely invested in Clinton's candicacy and let the Appalachians be.
Craig Hickman
· 1 year ago
I believe in self-determination. If Appalachian poor folks want to stay poor, that's on them. If they want to reject a candidate whose programs many of them could benefit from because he's a black Muslim half-breed, then that's on them.
I don't feel no way.
I don't think Axelrod lives in a bubble at all. I think it was absolutely the right thing that Obama campaigned in West VA from a distance.
Anonymous
· 1 year ago
The history of people voting against their self-interest is long and tragic.
Witness the strength of the black vote for Bill Clinton in the '90s. Bill Clinton was the best Republican president since Eisenhower.
So long as they are in the minority come November, I won't hold the stupidity of the hillbillies against them. They want to stay in the 19th century, that's their business.
Anonymous
· 1 year ago
loni elder - ARE people shocked of HRC's win? I ain't. What I am shocked over is how much the media has spun this so-called "victory" of hers like it was some huge thing. It don't mean s**t.
heartsandflowers
· 1 year ago
I think the bigger picture is the true elitism of the super-rich who come up with all these very interesting but obvious ways to fan the flames along class, gender, ethnicity, geography, and whatever other form of categorization they can come up with to keep the masses fighting amongst themselves to jockey for head-victim-in-charge. If people would wake up and realize who the REAL ENEMY is we would not be having these problems. These Appalachians or [insert whoever else is racist, sexist, holding someone back, voting against their interests] are not the problem. What we see is the result of the problem and as long as we focus on that we will not SOLVE or RESOLVE anything. Tomorrow it will be somebody and something else. IT'S DISTRACTION!!!! And yet it's what we focus our attention on.
Intrepidblackman
· 1 year ago
It all is a distraction. We should attempt to define the narrative ourselves. Clinton has done a great job of getting everyone to think that WV is the critical thing.
Before WV it was North Carolina and Indiana, before that it was Texas and Ohio. Now its going to be Kentucky.
We need to define the race in a paradigm that works to our advantage.
Branden Adams
· 1 year ago
Dear JJP and other purveyors of anti-ism,
Please don't categorically reject Appalachian folks because of some half-educated column from Josh Marshall at TPM. Half of his facts are based on demeaning scholarship from the first half of the 20th-Century, the same demeaning scholarship, I should add, that relegated African-Americans to subhuman status. The truth is, Appalachians are racist because, as heartsandflowers said, "the REAL ENEMY" told them to be during the past century's labor struggles.
If not for anti-labor capitalists like HRC who have bought their way into the mind and government of Appalachia, there'd be racial harmony and socialism.
I doubt Pat has objected to any of those "race pride" narratives regarding Blacks voting for Obama because he's "one of them", so Pat can't say a thing when I point out the obvious in his racialist diatribe: his poor little "Hillary is one of us [White folk]" feelings were being hurt.
I guess he could accept certain people labeled "dumb" (excuse me, uneducated). In Ohio they contrasted the number of White voters vs. Black voters who said "race" was important so he could only protest so much then when the polling suggested voters had "racist" reasons for voting the way they did. Oh but he couldn't stomach the idea of White folks being called DUMB RACIST!! lmao!!
Must have hit too close to home...
Nquest
· 1 year ago
The truth is, Appalachians are racist because, as heartsandflowers said, "the REAL ENEMY" told them to be during the past century's labor struggles.
Talk about "demeaning", lackluster scholarship. This idea suggest that Appalachians can't think for themselves and didn't make a cost-benefit analysis.
Hell, they were right there when Black were not only "relegated" to subhuman status but were treated as such. They also witnessed what happened to people (Black people, e.g.) when they resisted.
Human beings are rational creatures. It is "demeaning" to suggest that poor/working-class White folk didn't have their own rational reasons and didn't come to their own rational conclusions as opposed to being "TOLD" what to think as if they couldn't think on their own.
People love to preach personal responsibility to Black folk while at the same time (like Barack Obama) depicting grown azz White people as helpless victims. Poor/working class White folk are fully capable of thinking on their own and every bit as responsible for the conscious decisions they make as anyone else.
But maybe it's too much to ask for there to be some equality of idiocy... Maybe it's too much to ask for someone to come along and say:
"The Real Enemy" didn't hold a gun up to the head of Appalachians, etc., put on white sheets or commit any kind of racist violence or hold any kind of racist beliefs they didn't want to hold/believe in the first place.
I say that understanding the point you're trying to make but I also question why the idea is always left there. Obviously, poor/working class Whites must feel their benefiting or safe or have more to lose than gain by sticking to "what they are/were told."
The same way people rationalize that X is what Obama has to do or not do -- to play the game, double standards and all -- is obviously the same kind of human rationale that goes poor/working class Whites attitude about forging solidarity with other races across class lines.
Anonymous
· 1 year ago
@nquest
I was kind of losing you at the end there so could you clarify the last 2 paragraphs? I think what you are saying is something I have just begun thinking about so I will write about what I think you meant - correct me if I'm wrong!
I too find it interesting that there's this consensus that there are certain things Obama cannot do or say if he wants to be president because he is black. I am NOT saying the constraints of race and racism are not real. I feel like I live Obama's experience during this campaign on the micro-level everyday in my professional life so believe me I get race and racism (I live in Europe and have too many people asking me if I'm Muslim - the parallels are uncanny).
I am however growing tired of the victim thinking that underlies the current discussions on race and racism and don't ask me how you do it differently. Most people give up and say they think we should just not talk about it. I think we need to continue the conversation but the idea that working class whites are duped into thinking the way they do or that black candidates can't do certain things is limited in my perspective.
Barack Obama could behave differently. He could use a different tactic. Granted he probably wouldn't win but I guess I don't believe you can change the system from the inside and I am having a hard time feeling sorry for him because those are the rules of that system he's trying to break into. Maybe I'm too cynical on that point, I don't know. No question the race baiting attacks are unfair and on a human level I do feel for him (like I said, I get the same stuff in my life) but I am questioning this mass sympathy we are supposed to be feeling for him.
Somewhere all of this is a HUGE distraction from the lameness of the Democratic Party. They just suck and all the race and gender spectacles have really served to distract us from how much the party just sucks.
This was a historical moment to really present some new ideas - an alternative to the Republican neo-liberal agende and the Dems squandered it and you know why? Becuase they are Repub Lite. And the party structure is pretty undemocratic (not that the Repubs are much better) but let's not talk about the delegate/electoral system - let's race bait and wonder if a white woman can be racist. I am a little bitter about all of this, but echo others sentiments that this has all been a huge distraction.
Anonymous
· 1 year ago
That last paragragh was just a rant to the air - it was not directed at JJP. I think it is important to dissect and be aware of how race (and gender) are being used in the campaign so it's not that I think talking about it is the problem. I am peeved that it in the media in general has overshadowed talking about more critical issues about how gets access to the American political system (they are all elitists!) and the way the race is run (pls someone put limits on how long a campaign can run in the future - we can't go through another 2 year campaign! and we could have financed several health care clinics with the donations or paid down our debt) the way policy gets decided. You can't extract race/gender from this and say it's unimportant but it has been talked about in as if race/gender are just things that get acted upon rather than seeing these identities can and do act. That sounds hella cryptic maybe but I am an academic and struggle with how to say this. I just want less victim talking and more acknowledgment that all people can and do think and have power.
Branden Adams
· 1 year ago
Dear Anonymous @nquest,
To insinuate the type of racism that is predominantly present in Appalachia can be rationalized is foolish. We have absolutely no economic, religious, or any other kind of reason to be racist. In fact, it is a dearth of reason, as is shown by the lack of higher education for a significant population, that in many cases opens the door to such racism. It's ignorance, plain and simple. A little bit of independent thinking would be great.
Morgaine
· 1 year ago
People are misreading the Appalachian problem. People here aren't really white. They might refer to themselves as white, but they're almost all tri-racial, being some blend of Scots-Irish, Native American and, yes, African American. While they are culturally predisposed to feel threatened by the presence of blacks who are a rarity here and therefore an unknown element, the primary problem for Barack is the churches. They think he's foreign, a Muslim, won't salute the flag, might be the anti-christ, a terrorist, a communist, and elitist. This is the actual buzz in the churches here, and the local news occcasionally reinforces these misconceptions. Many areas here don't even get MSNBC, they don't watch CNN, they never heard of Keith Olbermann or Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert. They never heard of a "blog." They aren't hearing Barack's side of the story at all.
The elitist tag is much more important than anyone realizes. Appalachian people are reviled and disparaged by the rest of the country with impugnity. These are humble and proud people who don't like being laughed at, especially by snooty, well-educated Northerners. They're suspicious of strangers until they know they won't laugh at the way they live.
The population here is very old - younger people go North to find work, then retire back down here when they're old enough. They have the poorest literacy rate in the country. 1 in 4 people in Kentucky is disabled. They receive more government aid than almost any other area. They are particularly sensitive to these issues, and Barack has all but ignored the people in this area.
If he wants to make a decent showing in Kentucky, he needs to grab John Edwards and come to Prestonsburg where John kicked off his campaign to end poverty, following in Bobby Kennedy's footsteps. He needs to let people know that he's not against guns, coal or tobacco, and probably marijuana, too, since it's the number one cash crop in KY. He needs to talk about health care, because everyone is sick.
He won't get huge crowds here, but voters in this area are predisposed to vote Democratic. The Red State effect was completely about religion, and that is waning because the Republicans didn't give them the Christian nation they wanted. They want a candidate they can believe. It's true that some of them will never vote for an African American, anymore than certain ethnic groups on the East Coast would, but there are many that can be reached if the effort is made.
Anonymous
· 1 year ago
@branden adams
There are plenty of reasons to be racist and the top one has usually been to cut down on (fair) competition and privilege one's own group as I see it. I personally don't see the privilege this West Virginian or Appalachian person we are discussing (but have little first hand knowledge of) is getting but they've got to be getting something they value out of it. On the whole, I am not a fan of dismissing groups of people as without choice. Whether or not it is a conscious choice is up for discussion but I don't think education is synonymous with non-racist.
Anonymous
· 1 year ago
@branden adams again
Forgot to say that I see what you are getting at (and the optimist in me wants to agree!) but like I said I think the motivations behind any kind of exclusion/oppression is complicated. It may have sounded like I was suggesting it was a rational choice but I really just mean it's a choice affected by a lot of factors. I see not acknowledging people's power to make a choice as disempowering.
I just think of the scholars at Yale back in slave days justifying slavery through religion. Some people would have called them educated and you can't get more racist than arguing for slavery - I hope you can't get more racist than that!
So also how you define education is a question. Maybe I am a pessimist but I wish education was the key. I just don't think it is. Fortunately most people are good people so I think many people, if confronted with new knowledge, would choose new behaviors but there's no guarantee. The benefits of being enlightened vs maximizing gain for yourself or your group often is not enough - Hillary Clinton's race baiting strategy is a great example of that, don't you think?
Submariner
· 1 year ago
This was an excellent post with superb and refreshing commentary from the readers. You folks really made me think. Here is something to bring levity to such a vigorous and bright exchange. Keep up the strong work, JJP and readers.
All Comments
Why such racism among Appalachians?
a) Like the Irish, they came to believe blacks were competition for jobs, education and skills--whether they were in slavery or not. BTW, western Virginia was more or less anti-slavery--until after the Civil War.
b) Scots Irish became more for racial purity, especially DURING Reconstruction. They have a bone to pick with the pure Irish, who consider their intermarrying with the Scots as harmful to the race, and watering down resistance to their common enemy, the English. They were also Protestants rather than Catholic. However, the fiercely independent and nonconformist mountain people were being equated as being like Sambos by the time Reconstruction ended. This was an insult, and if they were acting like Hatfields and McCoys already, this made them even more hypersensitive. In short, they were the equivalent of "white Negroes." "Appalachian Anglo Saxons began to replace blacks in the national awareness," so says William H. Turner in his paper, Blacks in Appalachian America: Reflections on Biracial Education and Unionism which came out in Phylon, a magazine put out by Clark-Atlanta University in 1983, because abolitionists and other social activists had tired on black suffrage and aims.
I leave it to you to find this paper and others...(smile)
Of course, these white folks themselves need to take a long look in the mirror.
Have any of you seen Deliverance? He could probably do without the incestous back forrest rape lobby anyhow.
Personally, I think it's much more beneficial for him to target the older white women who are extremely invested in Clinton's candicacy and let the Appalachians be.
I don't feel no way.
I don't think Axelrod lives in a bubble at all. I think it was absolutely the right thing that Obama campaigned in West VA from a distance.
Witness the strength of the black vote for Bill Clinton in the '90s. Bill Clinton was the best Republican president since Eisenhower.
So long as they are in the minority come November, I won't hold the stupidity of the hillbillies against them. They want to stay in the 19th century, that's their business.
Before WV it was North Carolina and Indiana, before that it was Texas and Ohio. Now its going to be Kentucky.
We need to define the race in a paradigm that works to our advantage.
Please don't categorically reject Appalachian folks because of some half-educated column from Josh Marshall at TPM. Half of his facts are based on demeaning scholarship from the first half of the 20th-Century, the same demeaning scholarship, I should add, that relegated African-Americans to subhuman status. The truth is, Appalachians are racist because, as heartsandflowers said, "the REAL ENEMY" told them to be during the past century's labor struggles.
If not for anti-labor capitalists like HRC who have bought their way into the mind and government of Appalachia, there'd be racial harmony and socialism.
Why is Pat Buchanan on national TV?
I doubt Pat has objected to any of those "race pride" narratives regarding Blacks voting for Obama because he's "one of them", so Pat can't say a thing when I point out the obvious in his racialist diatribe: his poor little "Hillary is one of us [White folk]" feelings were being hurt.
I guess he could accept certain people labeled "dumb" (excuse me, uneducated). In Ohio they contrasted the number of White voters vs. Black voters who said "race" was important so he could only protest so much then when the polling suggested voters had "racist" reasons for voting the way they did. Oh but he couldn't stomach the idea of White folks being called DUMB RACIST!! lmao!!
Must have hit too close to home...
Talk about "demeaning", lackluster scholarship. This idea suggest that Appalachians can't think for themselves and didn't make a cost-benefit analysis.
Hell, they were right there when Black were not only "relegated" to subhuman status but were treated as such. They also witnessed what happened to people (Black people, e.g.) when they resisted.
Human beings are rational creatures. It is "demeaning" to suggest that poor/working-class White folk didn't have their own rational reasons and didn't come to their own rational conclusions as opposed to being "TOLD" what to think as if they couldn't think on their own.
People love to preach personal responsibility to Black folk while at the same time (like Barack Obama) depicting grown azz White people as helpless victims. Poor/working class White folk are fully capable of thinking on their own and every bit as responsible for the conscious decisions they make as anyone else.
But maybe it's too much to ask for there to be some equality of idiocy... Maybe it's too much to ask for someone to come along and say:
"The Real Enemy" didn't hold a gun up to the head of Appalachians, etc., put on white sheets or commit any kind of racist violence or hold any kind of racist beliefs they didn't want to hold/believe in the first place.
I say that understanding the point you're trying to make but I also question why the idea is always left there. Obviously, poor/working class Whites must feel their benefiting or safe or have more to lose than gain by sticking to "what they are/were told."
The same way people rationalize that X is what Obama has to do or not do -- to play the game, double standards and all -- is obviously the same kind of human rationale that goes poor/working class Whites attitude about forging solidarity with other races across class lines.
I was kind of losing you at the end there so could you clarify the last 2 paragraphs? I think what you are saying is something I have just begun thinking about so I will write about what I think you meant - correct me if I'm wrong!
I too find it interesting that there's this consensus that there are certain things Obama cannot do or say if he wants to be president because he is black. I am NOT saying the constraints of race and racism are not real. I feel like I live Obama's experience during this campaign on the micro-level everyday in my professional life so believe me I get race and racism (I live in Europe and have too many people asking me if I'm Muslim - the parallels are uncanny).
I am however growing tired of the victim thinking that underlies the current discussions on race and racism and don't ask me how you do it differently. Most people give up and say they think we should just not talk about it. I think we need to continue the conversation but the idea that working class whites are duped into thinking the way they do or that black candidates can't do certain things is limited in my perspective.
Barack Obama could behave differently. He could use a different tactic. Granted he probably wouldn't win but I guess I don't believe you can change the system from the inside and I am having a hard time feeling sorry for him because those are the rules of that system he's trying to break into. Maybe I'm too cynical on that point, I don't know. No question the race baiting attacks are unfair and on a human level I do feel for him (like I said, I get the same stuff in my life) but I am questioning this mass sympathy we are supposed to be feeling for him.
Somewhere all of this is a HUGE distraction from the lameness of the Democratic Party. They just suck and all the race and gender spectacles have really served to distract us from how much the party just sucks.
This was a historical moment to really present some new ideas - an alternative to the Republican neo-liberal agende and the Dems squandered it and you know why? Becuase they are Repub Lite. And the party structure is pretty undemocratic (not that the Repubs are much better) but let's not talk about the delegate/electoral system - let's race bait and wonder if a white woman can be racist. I am a little bitter about all of this, but echo others sentiments that this has all been a huge distraction.
To insinuate the type of racism that is predominantly present in Appalachia can be rationalized is foolish. We have absolutely no economic, religious, or any other kind of reason to be racist. In fact, it is a dearth of reason, as is shown by the lack of higher education for a significant population, that in many cases opens the door to such racism. It's ignorance, plain and simple. A little bit of independent thinking would be great.
The elitist tag is much more important than anyone realizes. Appalachian people are reviled and disparaged by the rest of the country with impugnity. These are humble and proud people who don't like being laughed at, especially by snooty, well-educated Northerners. They're suspicious of strangers until they know they won't laugh at the way they live.
The population here is very old - younger people go North to find work, then retire back down here when they're old enough. They have the poorest literacy rate in the country. 1 in 4 people in Kentucky is disabled. They receive more government aid than almost any other area. They are particularly sensitive to these issues, and Barack has all but ignored the people in this area.
If he wants to make a decent showing in Kentucky, he needs to grab John Edwards and come to Prestonsburg where John kicked off his campaign to end poverty, following in Bobby Kennedy's footsteps. He needs to let people know that he's not against guns, coal or tobacco, and probably marijuana, too, since it's the number one cash crop in KY. He needs to talk about health care, because everyone is sick.
He won't get huge crowds here, but voters in this area are predisposed to vote Democratic. The Red State effect was completely about religion, and that is waning because the Republicans didn't give them the Christian nation they wanted. They want a candidate they can believe. It's true that some of them will never vote for an African American, anymore than certain ethnic groups on the East Coast would, but there are many that can be reached if the effort is made.
There are plenty of reasons to be racist and the top one has usually been to cut down on (fair) competition and privilege one's own group as I see it. I personally don't see the privilege this West Virginian or Appalachian person we are discussing (but have little first hand knowledge of) is getting but they've got to be getting something they value out of it. On the whole, I am not a fan of dismissing groups of people as without choice. Whether or not it is a conscious choice is up for discussion but I don't think education is synonymous with non-racist.
Forgot to say that I see what you are getting at (and the optimist in me wants to agree!) but like I said I think the motivations behind any kind of exclusion/oppression is complicated. It may have sounded like I was suggesting it was a rational choice but I really just mean it's a choice affected by a lot of factors. I see not acknowledging people's power to make a choice as disempowering.
I just think of the scholars at Yale back in slave days justifying slavery through religion. Some people would have called them educated and you can't get more racist than arguing for slavery - I hope you can't get more racist than that!
So also how you define education is a question. Maybe I am a pessimist but I wish education was the key. I just don't think it is. Fortunately most people are good people so I think many people, if confronted with new knowledge, would choose new behaviors but there's no guarantee. The benefits of being enlightened vs maximizing gain for yourself or your group often is not enough - Hillary Clinton's race baiting strategy is a great example of that, don't you think?