I grew up on the coast and slowly moved westward across VA for 30 years, finally arriving within sight of the Blue Ridge just within the last year. But only as I get to Appalachia do I approach parts of the South that were Unionist in the Civil War, as the preponderance of my own ancestors Down East had been. As a DU oldtimer who joined in 2002, I had completely given up on participating here in the wake of the serial "blame the South," "LET them secede," "they're all Confederates" threads last fall. "Ethnically cleanse the majority of black Americans NOW, in order to punish the white Southerners of 1860 for seceding" was the demographic implication of all those "we'd be so much better off without all those Southerners" comments. The implicit subliminal racism of such rhetoric was excruciatingly obvious to me with a family heritage of mixed ancestry.
What is less obvious but perhaps more pervasive is disdain for Appalachia. Anti-South hatemongering is devoted to labeling entire states, including the blue one I live in, as Evil Other. Anti-Appalachia sentiment is a lot more insidious in that it occurs entirely within states as well as on a larger level. Appalachian portions of some states are very much looked down on by other parts of the same states. The only thing saving Appalachian folk from the "get rid of them all and improve the nation" rhetoric is that people seem less enthused about carving up multiple states to get rid of undesirables than doing so to the nation as a whole by selecting a bunch of contiguous states.
"The South" is about as diverse as "America" itself, and neither really evokes any strong sense of identification for me. But just the word Appalachia resonates as more fundamentally real than any state or national boundaries. I'm not willing to "fight for" America, or Virginia, least of all "the South," literally or figuratively. But Appalachia, I'm not just willing to fight for but in various ways AM fighting for, as a very beautiful place under serious environmental assault. It needs volunteers to fight for it.
So while the rest of DU can engage in trollery whenever geographical differences are discussed, this may be the one place where people can talk about REAL REGIONAL issues NOW without endless north-south bullshit which IMO is irrelevant and counterproductive in light of how much Appalachia is one place with its own set of issues.
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