(03-23-2017, 08:29 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(03-22-2017, 06:45 PM)Odin Wrote: Liberal shaming of Appalachia: Inside the media elite’s obsession with the “hillbilly problem”
The article talks about Appalachia in particular, but ever since the election I've been seeing a nauseating amount of offensive shit from my fellow progressives about rural and small town Americans, some of it bordering on outright Social Darwinism ("They voted against their own healthcare coverage, let them die and decrease the surplus population!" and similar BS). I'm sick of hearing about how everyone out here is stupid, backwards, and inbred.
I'd suggest, if you already haven't, that you read Hillbilly Eulogy. Their cultural differences are real. On the other hand, "stupid, backwards and inbred" counts as a vile stereotype to me. Any group with an agenda is apt to demonize opposing groups. It is easy to take a reasonable and understandable cultural difference and exaggerate it into pure ugliness. I don't approve.
There is a rural tendency to see the government as inefficient, corrupt and autocratic. This too can be taken to the point of a vile stereotype. Can I daydream about a world where neither the hillbillies nor the government are demonized? While it isn't in the Bill of Rights, I'll argue for a right to daydream. I'm not about to confuse the daydream with reality, though. There's an awful lot of pre judgement and hatred flowing around.
I wouldn't be so quick on using JD Vance as a source. I had this exchange with a Reddit poster from the region and apparently many people are calling him full of shit:
Quote:A lot of Appalachian media writers have called him out on his background and have argued that he wrote the book as a stepping stone into rightwing politics (his recent move to Columbus lends credence to the theory). His book reads like an update of Reagan's welfare queen. He claims whenever someone calls him out on perpetuating the bootstraps hero myth that he isn't, but his rhetoric elsewhere says otherwise.
I can understand resentment. I feel it myself at times. I didn't love my home until I left it and got the resources to understand it better. But a lot of those aforementioned Appalachian writers have pointed out that Vance's actual experience of the "hollers" he's made himself the voice of and his self-representation don't mesh. Funnily enough, he'll talk a good talk on TV or in his NYT column(where he has unironically quoted "race scientist" Charles Murray), but he shies away from engaging with any of the Appalachian writers who've challenged him.
Sorry for the rant. I just really hate that guy. If I had his money, I would pay people not to read his book.
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