Middle Class White Minority?
that’s me, apparently.
www.associatedcontent.com/article/8611/appalachian_americans_the_invisible.html
There’s plenty more, courtesy of Google.
I do realize that I’m well outside the Appalachian Mountains now, not to mention middle-class. But this is where my mother’s family comes from. Rural Appalachian Kentucky. And what really sucks is, we’re the most scorned minority in America.
A lot of the culture showed in the article I’ve seen in the lessons my parents taught me. “Don’t get too big for your britches.” Don’t get a fat head. Oddly enough, my family *does* have a history of diabetes.
So if we’re whites who just happen to be poor, why are we the worst off of all minorities? We’re portrayed as uneducated (read: stupid), inbred, and generally unhygienic. For most “true” Appalachians, that’s not true at all. My mother’s family has a good bit of money. We’re educated. We’re definitely not inbred.Any other minority facing such a charge would sue and protest in the streets for centuries or until somebody paid the price. But it’s okay to be bigots against white trash in the mountains, because they haven’t “risen above” achieved the “American Dream”. I bet any black or Hispanic person would tell you that it’s hard to “rise above” when you’ve been dealt a crap sandwich from birth. Despite being the Social Darwinist’s dream, the United States isn’t a place where any poor kid can grow up to be some freewheeling billionaire. Sure, it happens. But for most, it doesn’t. Part of it’s because of property tax, which is an archaic and totally useless way of funding schools- ever wonder why, if the United States is such a wonderful land of equality and opportunity, there are poor crumbling schools just a few miles away from rich state-of-the-art schools?
Nobody believes I can be a minority because I’m middle class and white. Do black people not have their culture? Don’t Hispanics have one too? Appalachians certainly do too. All three groups have their own cultures, their own histories. So why is it unacceptable to spout bigoted nonsense about blacks and Hispanics, when it’s perfectly OK to do the same to Appalachians? I might be a middle-class white kid from eastern North Carolina, but my roots are in the Appalachian mountains. And really, it’s time to stop the utter stupidity and the mistreatment of Appalachians, and actually give them a bloody chance to advance here too.
I jsut found out that I am a minority. I can’t believe I’m getting so pissed off over this.
It’s funny that you posted this, as there was an incident on Facebook just the other day. One of my friends referred to her neighbors as hillbillies in a post about being a good neighbor. One of my other friends responded that he thought it was funny that she thought she was a good neighbor, but called them hillbillies. She responded by saying she only said it so those who had been to her house knew which house she was talking about. Ok, so if it was a black family, could she have said “The niggers on the corner.” instead of “The hillbillies on the corner.”?
I think the reason this persists is because white people are no longer allowed to make fun of other races, but they feel they are allowed to poke fun at themselves, which to them includes Appalachians.
A close family friend lives in Pittsburgh, but has a farm in West Virginia. He deals with Appalachians all the time and has nothing, but good things to say about them.
I should also point out, that she is a good neighbor and a good friend. She also mentioned that her “great grandparents were real hillbillies and proudly described themselves as such.”