The Hillbilly Stereotype: Razing History, Leveling Appalachia

[theHandpuppet]

Many thanks to Antigone382 for posting this link on the General Discussion forum.

http://kasamaproject.org/race-liberation/3395-27the-hillbilly-stereotype-razing-history-leveling-appalachia
The Hillbilly Stereotype: Razing History, Leveling Appalachia
Appalachian activism, culture and values have had tremendous impacts on life in the United States. Union coal miners put their lives on the line, and sometimes lost them, for worker’s rights, and we have reaped the rewards of their legacy. The miners who fought in the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest labor insurrection in United States history, laid the foundation for a national movement that eventually won the eight-hour day, weekends and minimum wage. Appalachians were pioneers of popular education, founding the Highlander Folk School and settlement schools, and were critical leaders and allies in the Civil Rights Movement.


No, I Don’t Find Your Hillbilly Jokes Funny: Cultural Stereotyping & the Destruction of Appalachia

I was presenting on a panel about resistance to strip mining in Appalachia at the 2010 Baltimore Radical Book Fair, and we’d made it to the question-and-answer session. Hands in the audience bolted up to ask about community-outsider activist relations, Obama’s policies on mountaintop removal and the efficacy of civil resistance in ending this destructive form of coal mining. Each question posed its own challenge, but none were particularly unexpected. That is, until one of the presenters called on an unassuming woman in the front row.

“I regularly read the comments section on the Beckley Register-Herald site,” she told us, “From these comments, I’ve learned that these people, they like what they’re doing, they like blowing up mountains.”

I first speculated that she was towing the coal industry line, suggesting that strip-mining brings jobs to coal-producing areas and is universally welcome in those regions. If someone received all their news about mining from the rabidly pro-coal Beckley, West Virginia Register-Herald, it’s reasonable that they’d come away with those sentiments.*

“They [Appalachians living in coal-extraction areas] hate us, they hate Obama, they hate people from Baltimore, they hate black people, they hate Muslims,” she continued, troubling my earlier assumption. Her mouth was literally twisting in anger as she spoke, “You say there are people [in Appalachia] who care about what’s happening but I see no evidence of that. Why are you there helping them? We should just say fuck ‘em, they want what’s happening to them.”.... MORE at the link posted above.