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.
