Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald has an excellent article from America’s poster child for white poverty, Hazard KY. For those wondering how to get more Appalachian white people voting their economic interests, understand that the GOP propaganda tack through blanketed rural radio stations is to argue, “Liberals are laughing at you.”
That is at best a half-truth.
Leonard Pitts, Miami Herald: White poverty exists,ignored
There is no national advocacy group to defend the white poor against such libels as this, no analogue of the NAACP or the National Organization for Women to assert their dignity. You may malign them without a whisper of complaint.
The invisibility of white poverty, says Edmund Shelby, editor of the Beattyville Enterprise, is part of the problem. “Those of us who are aware of the issues facing Appalachians and those of us who speak out about those issues see that as one [thing] that has kept us in the position that we are in for so long. I think that can be said for a lot of poor populations, because if you can say things about people that dehumanize them, then there’s no need to help them raise themselves up in any way because, after all, using that stereotype, they are incapable.”
That invisibility is ironic. Although the War on Poverty is generally remembered for what it did and did not do for black people in the cities, it was actually Appalachia Lyndon Johnson had in mind when he launched it. The president was deeply moved when he toured this part of the country. So was his predecessor, John F. Kennedy, who created the modern food-stamp program as a result. Kennedy’s brother, Robert made his own sojourn here when he ran for president in 1968.
So the GOP used attacks on the programs addressing black poverty to cut programs addressing all poverty. And then used half-truths against liberals to isolate the sources of information. That done, blatantly racist messaging could make people feel anger at programs that they thought were going to help blacks at their expense — even though it was all federal programs addressing poverty that were cut. And the GOP addresses them with one of their values of pride, that they themselves never can do–get out of debt by balancing the budget.
Its the same subtle scam that white suburbanites who have alternative sources of information get suckered with. And virtually all of the suburban rings around US cities are majority Republican despite the fact that some (Atlanta, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit) are more viciously racist than others. And more willing to stereotype and snicker at the Appalachian migrants in their midst–not the people from Appalachian states, but the people from the isolate rural areas that come with the traditional accent.
But if it is important not to overstate that nexus, it is also important to acknowledge that it exists, and that blinding African Americans and poor whites to its existence — dividing and conquering them — has long been a favored stratagem of American business and political interests. King said this plainly in a speech at the end of a 1965 march for voting rights: “To keep the poor white masses working for near starvation wages in the years that followed the Civil War,” he said, “if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire a former Negro slave and pay him even less.”
In lieu of a living wage, in other words, poor whites were given the cherished social capital of whiteness. Said King: “If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man.”
This is one article well worth clicking the link and reading. Leonard Pitts does a superb report.
Yeah. I was just reflecting this morning how ignoble I was for some of things that I’ve said here about “ignorant hillbilles”. But hate speech engenders more hate speech. I remember the six years I spent as a damnyankee (always one word) in Northern Virginia. Worst of all was my pre-school daughter being shunned. She took up with the Mormon girl across the street and was very hurt when her family insisted that we all become Mormons if they were going to play together. Actually she was made at me for refusing although I was willing to let her become a Mormon if she wanted but they wanted the whole family. The Catholics were smarter. Years later and back in Illinois they were willing to take her in parochial school as long as I paid (long green washes away all sins) and allowed her to take instruction. Of course she converted, peer pressure. I had expected it.
So I answer their hate with my own hate, even though I know it’s wrong.
I apologize to you and to all Southern Gentlemen of good will. Just don’t call me a damnyankee. If you must, call me a damn dago.
That “at least you’re white” seemed to work with Northern union members who shunned black membership even as blacks became on occasion the scabs that owners hired to break strikes. Which is why the desegregated unions that appeared in 1938 Southern textile workers strikes and the turn-of-the-century Southern timber workers strike in Louisiana were so threatening to the powers that be that they sent in the state home guards (the state militia) to break them.
It’s easy to get sucked into the divisiveness game.
When I was in college, because of my accent and the fact I transferred in from Clemson, my nickname became the hillbillyized “Clem”. Even though Maryland was a slave state at the time of the Civil War but like Missouri and Kentucky decided not to secede. And even though the Catholics in my dorm house were busy with their “Dago”, “Mick” routines with the Italians pointedly wearing orange on St. Patrick’s day. The 1960s were a mixed-up time.
Here’s the strange part of ethnic slurs. In the 1950’s I knew it was proper to say Knee-grow instead of the slur. But until we innocents had a guidance film in school, none of us knew the ethnic slurs that abounded in northern cities for Jews, Italians, Spanish, Polish, and other ethnic groups. And even that film didn’t cover the English slur for the French or the NFL slur.
Somewhen Knee-grow became as unpopular as the other N word. I guess AA is the term now. I mostly use “black” because that was the term preferred by black people closest to my age. I know multiple synonyms for the white ethnic groups you mentioned. My wife, who is partially of Scandinavian descent never heard of “Squarehead”. And I know the English slur for the French. Don’t know the NFL slur, though.
Happily, most of these belong to history. About two years ago, two of my fellow white mechanics were arguing about Obama when the Polish one used an AA slur that I hadn’t heard since the ’50s (maybe, just maybe the early ’60s) The other mechanic was aghast, “You dare to call the Pre4sident of the United states a __”.
I was just stunned that anyone remembered that word.
Oh! The NFL slur. You mean the team?
Yes, the Washington Slurs.
Just tweeted your diary. Pitts is a great writer.