The Hillbilly Stereotype: Razing History, Leveling Appalachia
Posted by onehundredflowers on July 22, 2011
This was originally posted at The Seams & The Story.
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.”
My first reaction was an overwhelming desire to scream. Staring out in to the mostly receptive audience, I decided against that course of action, took a couple breaths and leaned towards the microphone.
“I think that the Beckley Register-Herald comments, which are trolled by pro-mining extremists, are a very poor place to learn about mountaintop removal’s effects on Appalachia. I know many Appalachians who are fighting for their air and water, and strip miners who view their jobs as necessary evils at best,” I replied, the words flying out furiously, “I know people who are dying of cancer and gall bladder disease from poisoned water. If you think that Appalachians deserve what’s coming to them based on comments on an Internet site, you need to revaluate where you are getting your information.”
This woman came off as an extremist, but I worry deeply about the popularity of her sentiments.
*
I’ve noticed that among acquaintances of mine, including radicals who claim to have firm understandings of privilege and oppression, stereotyping and making jokes about rural Appalachians is acceptable. While these same friends call people out for enacting other forms of oppression, they don’t consider making derogatory comments about hillbilly culture as part of the same paradigm of racist-classist-patriarchal-capitalist-white supremacy they are fighting against.
Do radicals and progressives engage in this kind of dialogue because they think it’s all right to make fun of a cultural group commonly assumed to be homogeneously white and racist? Is it fine for individuals from affluent, cosmopolitan areas to make fun of rural whites, who are primarily money-poor?
As an anti-mountaintop removal activist currently living outside of Appalachia, challenging mainstream cultural assumptions about the region is a critical part of my work against strip mining. Admittedly, I don’t always do this well. I’ve sometimes found myself staying quiet when hillbilly jokes are made, afraid of seeming argumentative or overly politically correct. These are poor excuses, especially because commonly held cultural assumptions about Appalachians are not harmless. They are part of what allows destructive practices like mountaintop removal, which has leveled over four hundred peaks across the region and sullies its air and water, to occur.
Let’s face it: Many Americans see Appalachian people as expendable. Consciously or not, when we stereotype them as white, poor, uneducated, backward, patriarchal and racist we are justifying our comfort (the comfort brought to us from light and heat via mountaintop removal coal) at the expense of Appalachians dying from poisoned air and water. Many Appalachian activists have suggested that if mountaintop removal were happening in more culturally important or affluent areas, it would not be tolerated.
In black feminist and native Kentuckian bell hooks’ book Belonging: A Culture of Place, she writes eloquently about the real world consequences of stereotyping backwoods folk. In one essay, hooks, who was brought up in black hillbilly culture (thus challenging the notion that all mountaineers are white) writes:
It is not difficult to see the link between the engrained stereotypes about mountain folk (hillbillies), especially those who are poor, representations that suggest that these folks are depraved, evil, ignorant, licentious, and the prevailing belief that there is nothing worth honoring, worth preserving about their habits of being, their culture . . . To truly create a social ethical context wherein masses of American citizens can empathize with the life experiences of Appalachians we must consistently challenge dehumanizing public representations of poverty and the poor.
Are there rural, white Appalachians who are racist and patriarchal? Certainly. Do I think it’s important to call people out on their racism/patriarchy and engage in dialogue with them about it, if possible? Of course. But these actions must be coupled with continued examination of our own prejudices. In the essay “To Be Whole & Holy,” hooks writes:
Houses in the hollows close to ours [growing up] were inhabited by poor white folk, who we were taught were rabid racists . . .Even if they were by chance neighborly, we were taught to mistrust their kindness . . .Racial hatred and the racist actions it engenders are not the exclusive domains of poor whites. Class prejudice is at the core of their belief that these white people are more likely to be free of racial prejudice . . .I have found white neighborhoods in all the privileged-class neighborhoods I have lived in across the United States, including Kentucky, to have as much a presence of racial prejudice as their poor counterparts.
I see racism and patriarchy among the New York City coffee shop crowd I interact with daily, and grew up with it in the suburbs of the city, where whites are struggling with their prejudices in the face of growing and vibrant black and Hispanic communities. I’d like to go so far as to suggest that, by demarcating a white other (in this case, rural Appalachians) as more racist & sexist than us (progressives/radicals living in urban, affluent areas), we avoid confronting our own prejudices. Stereotyping also carries with it an inherent classism and cultural bias that lets us privilege certain forms of knowledge, such as college degrees and careers, over traditional Appalachian skills like wild crafting, hunting, crafting and food storing. I’ve found Appalachia to have as much, if not more, cultural richness as New York City, where I live now, and the liberal arts college town that I called home for two years.
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. Appalachia gave us the olde tyme music, the liberal hipness of Asheville, North Carolina and an anarchic spirit of resistance all but dead in the contemporary United States. I am constantly awed and intimidated by the skills my friends who grew up in southern Appalachia possess– deep knowledge of the mountains, the land, traditional crafts and community history.
Appalachians are not only fighting the coal conglomerates and out-of-state landholders in their struggle to end strip mining, but are also struggling against cultural assumptions that mark them as expendable. If we are choosing to fight injustice and exploitation, whether generally or in their specific manifestations through the destruction of the globe’s most ancient mountain range, we must examine our own understandings and popular representations of hillbilly culture. To win this struggle and any other that impacts Appalachia, it is imperative that we stand in solidarity with its people and call on our comrades to do the same.
* Beckley, West Virginia is the nearest large city to the Coal River Valley, where I lived between July 2009 and August 2010. The mountains that form the crumpled borders of the valley have been assaulted by mountaintop removal, their peaks flattened and ecology destroyed to extract thin seams of coal. The area is also a hotbed of activism against strip mining: it’s the home of Coal River Mountain Watch, one of the birthplaces of Mountain Justice, and the base for civil resistance campaign Climate Ground Zero.
This is the final, tweaked version of this piece. I decided to keep it pretty much the same, and to revisit this theme at a later date in a longer form article. There’s just so many directions it could go in, and so many angles to explore, that I simply can’t do justice to in a short piece.
-Wrenna Rust
carldavidson said
Very good. ‘Hillbilly culture’, like any, has its upside and downside. But I’ve found its upside to be among the more radical and class-conscious I’ve ever come across anywhere. Full disclosure: Until the age of 13 or so, I was fully immersed in the W PA/ West Virginia panhandle variant of this, where we were called ‘Hoopies’ and WWVA was the ONLY music station to listen to. Later, thanks to Elvis, Gene Vincent, Johnny Cash, Sleepy LaBeef and other ‘Rockabillies,’ we crossed the color line to R&B, Doo Wop and Jazz.
saoirse said
I was recently sent an invite to the “redneck games” by a new friend. I tried patiently to explain my objections.
Here’s the game’s websitehttp://www.syracuseredneckgames.com/
Mike E said
I’m thrilled to see a discussion of Appalachia opened… including about the disrespect and disdain often heaped on hillbilly people. Who can be against that (even those who know little about the region)? And who can doubt that anti-hilly attitudes help the mountaintopping nightmares.
Jed recently shared with me the following article:
And I have to say, that there is a generalized hostility toward white poor people in this society that does get reflected within “the left” — it includes the “Deliverance” fears and hatreds of poor whites (for being stupid, inbred, violent, etc.) but extends more widely (and is part of our parallel debate with those who question whether there is any revolutionary or progressive potential among working people who are white.)
On this particular post:
Do we really want to start discussions by opening an attack against humor:
The piece then quickly cruises into a familiar posture of being personally offended by the views of others.
Of course, this “first reaction” was in response to bigoted remarks that were so off-the-charts and stupid that they don’t represent any major current of thought. And even Wrenna Rust, the article’s author, pauses to say “This woman came off as an extremist, but I worry deeply about the popularity of her sentiments.”
But the article doesn’t linger long with such sentiments “popular or not”, as the the focus quickly becomes other leftists who are (once again) portrayed as permanently lagging and frustratingly hypocritical.
I almost feel this reproduces a classic form — as if it copies a worn and highly generic morality script that we have heard a hundred times before.
* Declaration of humorlessness and blind outrage,
* Establishment of the most extreme and stupid examples of bigotry as a kind of assumed baseline for society,
* quickly jump to imply that similar blindspots dominate (and indict) the presumably enlightened and leftist,
* make the justified (but somewhat banal) point that distorted depictions of oppressed people serve their oppression.
Change the defended identity in a few places and you can have an article outraged by stereotyping of Black people, or lesbians, or women in academia. What stands out is not the particular explanation of particular injustice or particular consequences, but the unrelieved posture of universalized indignation.
What strikes me is how un-hillbilly that is.
First of all, hillbillies love jokes about hillbillies.
I have heard hours of conversation revisiting the reruns of Beverly Hillbillies… and I would (in a soldierly way) try to mention that these shows spread stereotypes about mountain people, and my friends would just smile quietly and return to talking about how funny it was.
And I think it is worth digging more into the question of stereotypes itself. Often they exist because they reflect realities about a people (sometimes in extreme and negative ways, but not always) — and certainly peoples themselves have mixed feeling about those stereotypes (and have a hand in crafting them, and sharing them around).
Hillbillies know perfectly well that many things about them and their culture are unusual, quirky, eccentric and truly funny. And they love themselves for that. They tell stories of clannishness, and the enduring of extreme poverty, and the travails of undereducation, and of fear of the outside world, and about pride and a fierce combative sense of dignity.
And, it is worth noting that in discussions within a culture, people tell all kinds of tales on each other — to nudge each other out of backwardness, and to (simultaneously) celebrate the distinctiveness that their history has brought them.
* * * * * * * * *
Let me pass on a story….
I was living in Dayton and working at a steel forge there when I became involved in a struggle of domestic workers (women who cleaned the university of dayton and had been laid off in a particularly heartless way.) The women had chosen to fight. Some of them were Black migrants from Mississippi, others were whit migrants from Kentucky and West Virginia.
Betsy (one of the leading fighters) was a hillbilly. And she told us of her life story, moving from the coalfields to Dayton, working decades to buy a little home. And she shared the story of her father’s first visit to that home. She said she brought him in, and showed him around: “Here, Daddy, here is our kitchen, and the living room, and the bathroom. Here is the patio we had poured. Here is our garage. Come meet the neighbors.”
Betsy cooked a good meal, and served to her father and mother out on the patio. But, as they were eating, she noticed her daddy was more and more upset. Obviously so. So finally she broke the silence.
“What’s wrong daddy?” she asked.
“Betsy,” he replied, “I raised you better than to shit indoors and eat outside.”
And telling the story, Betsy’s eye twinkled.
* * * * * * * *
Any discussion of the treatment hillbillies face should include (as this one does) the awful stories of mountaintopping and the profound disrespect embodied by coalmine life and the ugly reactions encountered during migrations to Chicago or Columbus. Though they often don’t like the word “hillbillies” (and I as a result rarely use it)… they are proud of who they are.
But i imagine their own contributions might well start with some jokes of their, including some rude ones, just to push their sly self-deprecating perspective and to remind everyone that they are, after all, mountain people.
tellnolies said
Thanks for posting this. The casual prejudices expressed about poor rural white folks by so many ostensibly progressive, radical or even revolutionary-minded people is poison. A couple things are worth underlining here. The first is that even if certain forms of racist thinking are more deeply rooted among some sections of people than others, that does not tell you all you need to know about those people. Peoples thinking can change radically, but this is much less likely to happen when self-styled leftists view them as irredeemable. The second thing is that poor rural white culture is not homogenous. There are important differences between regions and sub-regions and even within the most reactionary cul-de-sacs there are always counter-currents. Our responsibility is to be clear about the potential basis for more radical thinking, to link up with what is already there, and to nurture it — none of which is possible so long as people insist on treating folks as (or even calling them) trash.
dodge said
Thank you Wrenna Rust, I feel better informed now about Appalachia. Is it true to say wherever there are miners you find music.It certainly seems so, working class culture here is rich in choirs, brass bands and orators. People have lost their way if they cannot respect a trade that is both arduous,potentially dangerous and more than its fair share of work related disease. If any look down their noses, just think what sort of life we would have without coal, how it would impact on our lives. Life would grind to a bumpy halt. It has often been said that the Appalachian strain or dialect, most closely resembling Elizabethan English….the voice of Shakespeare no less! It would have made the subject in school that bit more interesting. It might be a modern myth with a little bit of truth in it.
The day to day struggle of existence which all of us undertake must not be prostituted, miners have real power in their hands. A pox on those who sneer, rise up and take what is yours, you have given the world much in culture and example.
zerohour said
“I’d like to go so far as to suggest that, by demarcating a white other (in this case, rural Appalachians) as more racist & sexist than us (progressives/radicals living in urban, affluent areas), we avoid confronting our own prejudices.”
Without using the term, she seems to broach the subject of “white trash” and the ways in which a certain kind anti-racism is promoted wherein solidarity with people of color is at least partially predicated on denigrating a more vulnerable section of whites. It seems to be a litmus test of some kind, among certain whites anyway.
“Change the defended identity in a few places and you can have an article outraged by stereotyping of Black people, or lesbians, or women in academia.”
What makes this different is that, among radicals and large sections of the general population, white people tend to be homogenized, are not generally considered oppressed people and as such, are not usually defended. In fact, the exact opposite, as she points out. People of color use whites in Appalachia as a convenient stand-in for ridiculing white people, and affluent whites regard them as subjects of ridicule.
Labor Shall Rule said
Great post!
‘Redneck jokes’ are almost exclusively funny to who they are aimed at, so in this sense I guess you could say that they differ from other forms of sexist and racist humor, i.e. what do you call a redneck with a third grade education? A perfessor. But that doesn’t mean we should find them to be acceptable.
There is (no doubt) cultural discrimination against hill people in many forms. It’s nothing on the level of needing a literacy test to vote, but the reason the legal arm of the National Mining Association was able to put out that statement was because of the widespread stereotype of a culture of poverty pervading the region. They thought someone would read that and accept it as truth.
And yes, there is alcoholism and drug abuse here and there, including a disastrous Oxycontin epidemic that is on the scale of crack coming into New York. But continuing the be playful with the Beverly Hillbillies, Smokey and the Bandit, Dukes of Hazard and whatnot only reinforces a misunderstanding of Appalachian culture. There are aspects of the stereotype that are certainly true of redneck culture, in that domestic violence, anti-poor and anti-welfare sentiment (listen to Merle Haggard’s “I Take A Lot of Pride In Who I Am”), patriotism, alcoholism and a lack of education are almost universally shared characteristics – some more blatantly embraced (Wilson’s playful “Redneck Women”), some kept on the down low – of rednecks everywhere. This would be something we would have to fight while mobilizing them to play a leading role in laying the foundation of new rural communities, ones which have more access to what they’ve been deprived of for centuries.
balzac said
I’m going to assume that Mike can talk a lot more about this than I can, but this definitely seems like a potential bridge for talking about groups like the Young Patriots Organization and the collaboration between working-class (‘lumpen’, really, if we are to use strict Marxist terms) whites and groups like the Black Panthers… like in the great scene in American Revolution 2… There is also this book coming out, which I’ve been anticipating for a while: “Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times”
http://mhpbooks.com/book.php?id=560
Land said
A Short story. In the 70′s my friend and I hitchiked from Calif, to Tennessee to see my sister, She was married to a guy from West Virgina. He was a teacher who knew the hill language. He took us around and they talked. If he hadn’t know the language they would be silent. They would think you were a fed.
We met some people and my sister’s husband took us all to this place where they had a telescope. They and some of us had never seen a telescope. It was like seeing a miracle. For hours we looked through this scope and later talked about everything we had seen.
The people took us back and we all ate.
bobh said
I’m curious what people think of the movie Winter’s Bone, set in the Missouri Ozarks about a girl looking for her missing meth-cooking father. It’s based on a novel by Daniel Woodrell who’s from the region. I don’t know the region or culture so I don’t know how authentic it is, but it portrays the culture as a mix of dysfunction and dignity. Quite a powerful movie and I’m curious about the author’s “country noir” novels.
tellnolies said
I think Mike makes some important points. Even if the group being defended here is not commonly treated as oppressed in some supposedly progressive circles (which is why this article is worth posting despite its weaknesses), the structure of the argument is as Mike describes and is problematic. Indignation has replaced analysis for many radicals and it keeps discussions at a low level. There is, I think, a particular weakness on this question specifically among revolutionary-minded people and not just “the left” (which of course in its breadth includes folks with backwards views on pretty much everything and therefore functions as a perpetual source of fuel for the fires of constant inwardly directed indignation).
I just spent the past few days in Northern Minnesota which has a very different, and much less well known, culture of white rural working class poverty (also centered on mining) where I also read a very interesting history of the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike which located the strike within the larger regional political economy that included all that. Its a social configuration that has produced some very radical and even revolutionary movements with Socialists, Wobblies, the CP and Trotskyists all securing mass bases at one time or another and one that shaped me in ways that I have not always been conscious. It is also a culture that, presumably for reasons of geography. is much less characterized by vicious anti-Black racism than its southern and Appalachian counterparts, but can be quite hateful towards American Indians. It is also a culture that birthed a successful sort of indigenous social democracy in the form of Farmer-Laborism which, while compromised in all the predictable ways, helped make it a comparative hotbed of white anti-imperialist sentiment. Reading Sakai helped demythologize some of the local history I’d picked up as a young activist and challenged me to think more deeply about my own families history, but still rang false on its most central claim (the non-existence of a white proletariat). All of which is to say its complicated and that indignation may be fine for starting a conversation, but more often than not shuts it down just as quickly. The stereotypes surrounding working class Scandinavians are just nowhere near as vicious or ubiquitous as those directed against “hillbillies.” And while the latter are important to challenge insofar as they feed a species of chauvinism among revolutionary-minded folks, that what we really desperately need is a comprehensive and solidly empirically grounded class analysis of contemporary US society that explains the present potential of all the different fractions of the oppressed in the US. This is a much more difficult thing to produce than another expression of indignation.
Labor Shall Rule said
Balzac-
If you’re interested in radical Appalachian organizing I recommend “An Interracial Movement of the Poor”: Community Organizing and the New Left” (http://www.jstor.org/pss/3790056). You can access it on Google Books I believe.
Jed Brandt said
New bumper sticker:
“You can’t say that… I’m a fender.”
dodge said
what we really desperately need is a comprehensive and solidly empirically grounded class analysis of contemporary US society that explains the present potential of all the different fractions of the oppressed in the US. This is a much more difficult thing to produce than another expression of indignation.that explains the present potential of all the different fractions of the oppressed in the US. This is a much more difficult thing to produce than another expression of indignation.”
Tellnolies I highlighted your comment after some thought. Although I can offer no .special insight, a telescope is not the best instrument for observing Class. I do think however that a well prepared, all inclusive, ‘LOOK DOWN’, at what is class, objectively and its subjective components is long overdue. As you so succinctly expressed it and timely too…….it might take 5mins….might take 5years, but clarity on this question will ensure your own movement will prosper and aid other progressives in modern societies to move forward with their understanding. I do have an inkling it might take many out of their comfort zone……..if they undertake this task seriously.
Post 11…….
‘what we really desperately need is a comprehensive and solidly empirically grounded class analysis of contemporary US society’
ILi said
Great discussion on the “hillbilly” people. Like others, I find the devaluing of these people offensive. I think the article points to the need to deconstruct myths about poor people in general, particularly poor whites. There is a common misperception that poor whites don’t need the same aid, services, etc, as poor people of color. Nothing could be further from truth. Having been born and raised in the rural South and having lived throughout my earlier years among and around the quote/unquote “hillbilly” of sorts or Appalachian whites, I know firsthand of their struggles as well as their commonality with other poor folks. Further, people who speak ignorantly of these folks don’t know the cultural ties with poor Blacks via blue grass/blues, similar foods and cooking, etc. Ignorance is stupidity.
ILi said
In finishing my point on this topic of “hillbilly” people, I believe a reason for pervasive ignorance of these folks is due to stark differences between those who can be referred to as politically fierce, uncouth racist “rednecks” and poor, Appalachian whites whose life chances and experiences parallel that of other poor peoples. It’s unfortunate that many poor whites in need often align themselves with those from the political arena who simply want to galvanzize the white vote. They develop a “false consciousness” and incorrectly assume that their needs will be met by going along with other whites. The political power elite often look down on these working people and paint stereotypes of them. Sadly, their voices become lost as more affluent whites gain political power. I am though, glad and hopeful to see efforts to unite, not divide the poor. These peoples’ dire circumstances merit the same attention and regard as other groups. May we all lend support to these efforts.
Red Fly said
As someone born and raised here in the mountain west, I’m very familiar with the stereotyping and scapegoating of “hillbillies” and “hicks” (the more common term here — indicative of western/cowboy culture, which is quite different from Appalachian culture) that is routine amongst supposedly “enlightened” left liberal elitists. Indeed, even though I grew up dirt poor, lived in trailer parks and rode around in junker cars, I myself internalized, at times, these stereotypes and projected them onto folks who lived in more rural areas than I did. On the one hand, I feel a certain sense of shame for this, on the other, I think internalization of the class enemy’s hatred is very common with oppressed people.
A big part of it had to do with the fact that the schools I went to when I was I kid were divided starkly between rich kids and poor kids and the rich kids were seen as the cool, popular ones, the ones we poor kids should try to emulate. I remember, from as early as kindergarten, being picked on relentlessly because all my parents could afford were the K-Mart shoes and the K-Mart pants and the K-Mart shirts, while the rich kids had their Nikes and their Tommy Hilfiger, etc. I remember crying myself to sleep at night, begging God to let our family win the lottery so I could have the Nikes like all the cool kids. I remember feelings of shame and humiliation when my mom would drop me off at school in her 70′s Plymouth Valiant while the rich kids were being dropped off in brand new Volvos and BMWs. I remember the smirks and giggles and pointing when I got out of mom’s car. I remember being told that my parents — my dad a garbage man and welder and feed truck driver and my mom a grocery checker and a factory seamstress — were bums. I remember merciless teasing because I was skinny and we often times didn’t have enough food to eat. I remember being called a girl because my hair was long and we couldn’t afford to get it cut. I remember being told that I was trailer trash and that my life was worthless. I still feel the sting of this oppression like it was yesterday. And it is this sting that surely plays a significant role in my journey down the communist road.
Keep in mind that this is all in the context of a town that has this almost mythological self-identity as a bastion of progressive values surrounded by backwardness. My oh-so-liberal neighbors, with their organic wheat grass drinks and their latte enemas and their condescending filth about being such good humanitarians because they voted for Nader and Obama and the smug sense of superiority they learn from the likes of Bill Maher and Thom Hartmann and other petty-bourgeois liberals, rant constantly about how the stupid rural hicks are destroying the country because of their beliefs about Jesus or their defense of backward cultural ideas about marriage, etc. They talk about how they’re too stupid to vote for their self-interest. And of course by this they mean voting for Obama and the Democratic Party, as if these scum are somehow great defenders of working people when in fact, throughout their history, and ESPECIALLY over the last 30 years, they’ve proven time and time again that they don’t give fuck about working people, and that what they really care about is feathering their own nests by doing the bidding of the Wall Street bankster clique and the military industrial complex.
Deadly enemies of the working class in this country like Bill Clinton, who championed NAFTA, bank deregulation and so-called welfare reform, are treated by these liberal elite assholes as great heroes, but the “hayseeds” of rural America know the truth about these phony fucks. They know their lives don’t improve when either the Republicans or the Democrats are in charge. They know that the policies of both parties are designed and implemented by and on behalf of the rich. So they figure, “Hey, at least the Republicans don’t make fun of me. At least they’re not going to tell me how much smarter and morally superior they are.”
Our job as communists is to reject the false characterizations of “white hillbillies” propagated by the elite left liberals. That does not mean that we pander to backward notions they might have, but it does mean that we treat them with a level of respect that is worthy of the our heritage as defenders and champions of the people.
I’d love to hear more from Comrade Ely (and others with similar experiences) about his experiences trying to organize in the West Virginia coal mines — about the attitude towards communism and communists, about how Mike and his comrades tried to deal with backward notions around race and religion, etc., about how these folks felt towards left liberal elitists who pretended to want to help them while simultaneously making fun them, etc., and about the potential of Mao Zedong Thought, given its rural roots (despite the vastly different time and place), to appeal to “hillbillies.”
dodge said
Red Fly …..let’s rejoice people are still people the capitalists need us….we don’t need them. Rogues, maybe, for the most part, not fools, how best might we emerge stronger, fulfil our destiny, not prostitute our potential? That’s a wide canvass. We need to have a grasp or handle on what is contradiction(a fancy name for a problem), is it antagonistic or not? We need a good grasp on classes in our world, our own particular country. Without which we don’t have a clue who we are. Where we might be heading. A sober look at how our class came into being, how it managed to survive. In war the major objective is to destroy the enemies main force. so far capital have not achieved that. Lessons must be drawn up how to use the knowledge gained to survive, what works best, for us.
The term ‘white hillbillies’ has its equivalent in every area. Like all cheap fiction it contains a few grains of truth. “Don’t go THERE after dark !” Maybe. Maybe not? One thing stands out, we are all in the same boat…we ‘re ALL, and I do mean ALL in the same boat. ONE WAGE PACKET FROM DESTITUTION. Be ever so sure that has sunk in, so horrifying a truth that none dare speak its name. It’s truly a wonder that any of us remain sane. We survive though, how? The race labels, petty looking over the fence to see what Mrs Jones(Jimenez) has(has not). The denial of self worth leads to denigrating others. No wonder workers self respect is bastardized as white chauvinism. Self respect is never about denigrating others…..there is another word for that. Applies to countries too. How does one survive in a rat race, I mean to say if one is not a rat. Millions of us try to lead worthwhile useful and productive lives and wish better for our children. I have never met a miner yet, who wanted his son to join him in the cage down, though many have. We have to get this one message across and accepted, THERE IS ONE RACE__ THE HUMAN RACE.
I doubt we have much to teach fellow workers about survival, a few tips here and there learnt along the way, perhaps. Workers have a healthy scepticism. They won’t be moved by claims of infallibility, not from us. I echo Red FLY and look forward to Mike Ely’s experiences, shedding light on that part of the world, the better to illuminate future practice. The nature of trade unions their potential and of course limitations, would add value.
James Tracy said
Thanks for posting this. I’d add that there is also a significant progressive history of descendants of the Southern migration while in northern cities. Peggy Terry, Jobs or Income Now Community Union and the Young Patriots Organization. Working out of Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, (then alternatively called Hillbilly Harlem or Hillbilly Heaven) they worked hard to organize for their own class interests and in solidarity with radicals of color. Next month, you can learn more about these groups in a book I co-authored called “Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times.”
Matt said
Great post! I couldn’t agree more! Raised in Southwest Virginia, moved out of the region and did some activism against the coal industry and was constantly stunned by the lack of awareness about what is going on in Appalachia. Thanks!