Denim Quilt, April 2007
3 months ago
Please welcome guest blogger Betty Cloer Wallace. Ms. Wallace resides in Western North Carolina and is a direct descendant of Roderick Shelton, first English settler in Madison County,NC. She teaches writing and literature at a local community college.
Bill O’Reilly’s recent contemptible rant against Appalachian Americans is only the latest example of the widespread and multigenerational problem of Appalachian hillbilly stereotypes.
Quite simply, O’Reilly reminded the world once again that people of the Appalachian Mountains are still the only cultural group in America that many people have the audacity to ridicule publicly as being of low intelligence, and worse.
Can you imagine if O'Reilly had made the same despicable statements about ________ in _________, or ________ in ________, or _______ in ________. (Fill in the blanks with any racial or ethnic or cultural slurs you can imagine, the more insensitive the better.)
How can we as a people ever overcome this pervasive hillbilly stereotype? Why do we continue to pull in our heads like turtles and pretend we don't care and that we will survive regardless of the outside world? Well, I do care—for myself, my family and friends, and my culture—and I don't believe that we are surviving very well or will survive in the future as a culture with a shred of honor and dignity if we do not rise up, en masse, and protest at every opportunity this kind of insensitive abuse.
We continue to loll about in our insular Snuffy Smith, Lil Abner, Mammy Yokum, Jed Clampett, grits-and-possum stereotype as if the opinion of the rest of the world does not matter, even while we are being brutalized every time someone laughs at our dialect or accent, or asks WHERE are you from, or rejects us for a job, or does not publish our writing because how could an ignorant hillbilly possibly have something to say.
A professor at the University of Colorado once said to our own Charles Frazier, "Imagine that! A hillbilly with a Ph.D.!" Even worse than the professor thinking such a misbegotten thought was that she felt entitled to publicly say it right to his face. Can you imagine her making that statement to a person of any other racial or ethnic or cultural group? "Imagine that! A ______ with a Ph.D.!"
As much as I love COLD MOUNTAIN, both book and movie, I hated the "Young Mammy Yokum" portrayal of Ruby by Renee Zellweger who won an Academy Award for it. (Frazier’s Ruby in the book had a quiet strength and wisdom, as do most native Appalachian people.) As much as I love our bluegrass music, I hated the stereotypical portrayal of ignorance in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"
And, when I worked in the Alaskan Arctic, an Eskimo woman who had seen a "Songcatcher" DVD asked me why hillbillies don't fix up their houses. She thought the stage-set ramshackle buildings in that movie were really the kind in which we actually live—rather like us stereotyping Eskimos as living in ice-block igloos, the difference being that we are stereotyped as being too dumb or lazy to fix up our houses while Eskimos are stereotyped as being intelligent enough to survive in an extreme place.
In the age of global communication, this debilitating hillbilly stereotype is pervasive even internationally, and it affects us negatively on so many levels.
For the past century, companies that have considered our region for placing new enterprises have looked for local "hands" to do their low-level jobs, while bringing in management and executives (the “brains”) from outside; and now no one even considers Appalachia as a place where management would want to bring their own families to live or where intelligent local people might be available for employment.
Further compounding the problem, too many of our local governments are now made up of second-tier pseudo-leaders who are interested primarily in promoting tourism; but who, we should ask ourselves, will own the new hotels and mountaintop second-homes and assorted eateries the appointed tourist boards and self-serving chambers of commerce say we need—and who will be paying increased taxes for infrastructure to support them, and cleaning their rooms and waiting their tables and manicuring their lawns?
The local "hands," of course, are expected to do those low-level jobs. This servant mentality is deeply embedded in our history and culture and language, and all of us have perpetuated it simply by not rising up and fighting it. “He/she is a good hand to_____," we say.
Zell Miller of Georgia is the only well-known person who has ever stood up publicly to try to end this crippling multigenerational Appalachian stereotype. He single-handedly created enough flak several years ago to prevent television producers from creating a Beverly Hillbillies Reality Show that would have placed an Appalachian family in a Beverly Hills mansion and ridiculed them for a year. Can you imagine if the producers had even suggested doing the same with a Beverly _____ Reality Show? (You fill in the blank with the most insensitive racial or ethnic or cultural slur you can think of.)
The reality show producers even advertised in our local newspapers for an ignorant mountain family, all expenses paid. Can you imagine the justifiable outrage if they had placed such advertisements in the Atlanta or Birmingham or New York papers for an ignorant _____ family to send out to Beverly Hills and ridicule for a year.
While some racial and ethnic and cultural groups recently tried to get a newspaper cartoonist fired, and rightfully so, for depicting the shooting of a "stimulus plan gorilla,” O'Reilly was shooting down the future of an entire culture by perpetuating a century-old stereotype in the most egregious and offensive manner—and we ought to be outraged. We ought to care, and care deeply, because the issue is infinitely larger and more far-reaching than simply our own personal irritation with O’Reilly.
Actually, O'Reilly is small potatoes when one considers what we as a culture are up against. This negative stereotyping of our culture is becoming more focused and pronounced than ever before, simply because it has become politically incorrect to target other groups. Think of all the other minorities in this country who are discriminated against. Are any of them summarily and publicly declared to be ignorant and of low IQ? Can you name any other such group?
Other minorities may be insidiously stereotyped and discriminated against for assorted other reasons, but they are not blatantly and openly ridiculed as ignorant. And now, O'Reilly has added "immoral" and "drug-addicted" to our litany of Appalachian stereotypes, as well as our being unworthy to live in our own mountain homeland. Our children should move to Miami, he says. Oh, my.
Even "rednecks," who are everywhere and are a social class rather than a culture, are not dismissed as ignorant and inferior to other people because of intelligence. In fact, rednecks are often praised for their many independent and self-sufficient attributes, except for those rednecks who also happen to be classified as ignorant hillbillies in one-gallused overalls sleeping with their sisters and the farm animals.
Fortunately some "outlanders" do "get it" and are embarrassed by the likes of O’Reilly, but the fact remains that no one outside of an abused group can truly "feel" it without having "felt" it. No one without minority physical characteristics or other personal differences can truly "feel" that discrimination. No one outside someone with a mountain accent (or any other accent or dialect outside the prevailing norm) can "feel" a job interviewer lose interest when you open your mouth to answer
a question.
O'Reilly is hate-filled, but he is not a fool. He has built an empire by spouting the poisonous hatred that millions of people want to hear. They do listen to him and are influenced by him. While he himself is not fully the issue, he is a flash point for bigotry and intolerance, and that is why he is dangerous.
Yes, O’Reilly is a catalyst, but he is not the source of our problem. We are. We are to blame for not doing everything we can to root out such ignorant O’Reilly-type bigotry, to expose it for what it is, and then to replace it by honoring who we really are—by honoring our centuries-old heritage of persistence, perseverance, courage, loyalty, and love of freedom nourished for generations by our Scottish, English, Irish, German, Welsh, and Cherokee ancestors.
Why can we not pick up our pine knots and go to war against this blatant, insidious destruction of our culture? It will not take care of itself, and no one else is going to do it for us.
For the past 125 years, especially during wars and periods of economic depression, people have come into our mountains to exploit us as easy targets as they irreversibly destroy our forests, scalp our mountaintops, pollute our rivers, turn our community schools into mega-institutions, raise our taxes, rape our land with roads and airports and cookie-cutter shopping malls, and ultimately pollute our DNA.
It becomes increasingly harder to identify real native mountaineers, and within a few more generations our real culture, like that of the Melungeons, may fade into oblivion long before the stereotypes disappear.
Our centuries-old physical characteristics will be gone, along with our language, values, customs, ethics, and morals; and that is why it is important for writers and storytellers and videographers to work overtime now to record our rapidly vanishing culture, to record who we are.
Children in the future may be asking, "Who exactly were the hillbillies? Where did they live? Where did they come from? Where did they go?" And their mothers will respond, “You must not say that ‘H’ word. It is politically incorrect.”
Let us now pick up our pine knots and go to war—to save ourselves.
hillbilly+stereotypes appalachia +history+of+appalachia appalachian+history
13 comments:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
You sound angry and dire and a bit over dramatic.
Being an Appalachian is a way of life, I would say, and not a matter of DNA or blood.
The false distinction that you champion between "real" and presumably "fake" Appalachians is a crutch that blinds you to the fact that Appalachia is a living, breathing, growing, changing way of life--not a pure place and pure people that are set in an unchanging stone. Moreover, your claim mirrors Sara Palin's "real America" talk that she used to rile up partisan differences during the election. Perhaps we would all be better off if we didn't go about claiming to know who is and who is not a "real" Appalachian--I mean, on what grounds do you make such a claim?
Those "real native mountaineers" that you mention are, like most everybody else, immigrants into this area that didn't always treat the Cherokees (much earlier immigrants) any better than many Americans treat Appalachians today.
Why reject the "hillbilly" name? Why not embrace it? Take the meaning of the name back instead of moaning about its current uses.
I am a hillbilly looking toward the future, not a [_________ insert your favorite politically correct term here] dreaming back at some imagined pure past.
Anonymous said...
9:12 AM
I beg your pardon, but I don't really understand what your goal is. Should we go to war and win the right to claim minority status. Gee, that has really worked well for all the other minorites.
I can't manage to care about the opinion of the outside world, or "the media" in particular. What they think is their problem. I don't feel called upon to correct other people's thinking, I'm trying to do what's right for me and my loved ones and I'm none too sure about my own thinking at any particular moment.
Our country is in peril at this time and I hardly think picking fights and "going to war" with our fellow citizens helps any of us.
I'm from Norton VA and my family has been back here for the last 200 years. I don't know if I'm a real hillbilly or not, but I'm not willing to let some strangers decide who I AM OR what I stand for, I don't think you should try to do that either.
Thank you for allowing me this chance to comment.
Doug Raine
Anonymous said...
12:35 PM
I remember distinctly about 1950 when I heard my family discussing the book and film, TOBACCO ROAD, with abject sadness that our culture was so misrepresented by the national media. That was my first inkling that the rest of the country did not see us as we saw ourselves.
The news and entertainment media have never represented us in a positive light, and they have, in fact, erroneously defined us negatively for a century, which has always been the justification, of course, for destroying our environment and our real culture; and they continue to do so--and millions of people worldwide believe them!
That is why we should go to war with the national media, in whatever way we can, to replace those insidious stereotypes with representations of who we really are--by honoring our centuries-old heritage of persistence, perseverance, courage, loyalty, language, and love of freedom nourished for generations by our Scottish, English, Irish, German, Welsh, and Cherokee ancestors.
Betty Cloer Wallace said...
2:29 PM
What really bothers me about your words are their stereotypical "us"/"them" framing of the problem.
Is it not a bit more complex? Are you not simply carrying another stereotypical scapegoat in blaming the media?
Who are "we" really? And who will define who "we" are?
I grew up and continue to live in Konnarock, Virginia. I am an Appalachian and you don't speak for me!
Anonymous said...
5:44 PM
Jacob,
The media has already and long ago, for more than a century, defined who we are by portraying us to the whole world as ignorant, genetically deformed, immoral Tobacco Road characters (if you have not read the book or seen this culture-defining film, please do so), as well as lazy Snuffy Smith and Lil Abner cartoons with one-gallused overalls kicking dogs off the porch, hot-to-trot Daisy Maes and Daisy Dukes, Clampetts in Beverly Hills, and O Brother convicts without enough sense to get in out of the rain, let alone be able to do jobs requiring some semblance of intelligence and literacy.
But we are not those characters, those cartoons, as long defined by the entertainment and news media and believed by millions of people worldwide as accurate portrayals.
We have real heritages centuries old, with legends and literature and ways to live on the earth and with each other. We are descended from people who left Scotland and England and Ireland and Wales and Germany for many reasons (mostly desperate reasons having to do with hunger or religion), people who came here and intermarried with each other and with native Americans of various tribes (Cherokee in my neck of the woods); and we go on into the future the best way we can, trying to hold onto the culture(s) of our past and looking forward to a non-discriminatory future for our children... but that future is growing increasingly impossible.
What happened to the spark in us that made us (our forefathers) stand up to tyranny? Why do we now think we can simply draw a circle around ourselves and shut out the rest of the world as if they don't matter? As if they cannot affect us?
I want us to be able to be who we really are, and to live as we so choose, with a place at the national and international table for every one us, and the chance for our descendants to be President of the United States or greeters at Wal-Mart or whatever they want to be.
I am neither a character from Tobacco Road nor Mammy Yokum nor Daisy Duke nor Granny Clampett nor any other cartoonish misrepresentation of our culture as portrayed by a century of entertainment and news media..... and I hate it when the media (FOX's O'Reilly and others in television and movies)---and ultimately the general public across the country--- continues to define who we are in the most despicable way.
So, you tell me who (if not the news and entertainment media) is the cause of the predicament we find ourselves in---the only cultural group in the United States that O'Reilly or anyone else would dare castigate and ridicule with such hatred on national television. You tell me what would happen if coal companies started bulldozing down the Rocky Mountains or any other mountains in the United States or suggested that children leave New York or Montana or Texas or California to find a better life in Miami because where their families have lived for 200 years is a hopeless place, a culture of ignorance.
Yes, O'Reilly himself is small potatoes, merely a media mouthpiece and irritant, but thousands of people worldwide do believe him and others of his kind, and therein lies the problem with our future and the future of our children and grandchildren.
Betty Cloer Wallace said...
7:30 PM
bill just plain sucks
you cannot change what people think
hillbilly is a sub set of People who live in the South many think people in the South are stupid and don't wear shoes
I think women in Chicago have thick ankles
none of it matters... at all.. not at all
Anonymous said...
7:41 PM
dear comments ie jacob my father was a big city kids who went into the army and was called hillbilly beccause his name was william. He was from a large family of 13 children and quit school in 9th grade when his father died. he had to go to work and help support the family.with 10 out 13 children living at home, it was hard to leave school, but he was far from ignorent or toothless and any of the other mean things that were done to him in bootcamp because he was a hillbilly from wv. Maybe if you live in appalachian territory you are not ridiculed every day. I am fat over 300 hundred lbs and no one every says i am fat to my face. maybe because i am a 6ft tall woman with attitude. But I cannot tell you how many children are picked on and harrased for being fat. food is an addiction just like drugs or drinking but do you ever see people ridiculed for being a drunk today. no it is not correct today . I was not a fat child i was only riddiculd as a child for being skinny skinner and to small to play with the other kids. I outgrew both those problems. Why should we tell anyone to not react and let things be. I think we should stand up for each other. does that mean trade insults like you all are doing. gee i wonder if there were people like you during the gassing of the jews. after all they did not stand up for themselves, so why would anyone want to help people who are being mistreated. I live in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with hill billys who live next door because they were forced off the mountains so sky line drive could be built. some times you just need to get off the couch and be counted.
Anonymous said...
10:58 PM
Injustice, my friends, is not something that Appalachians alone must face.
Waging war against "the media," may be comforting, but in practical terms will achieve very little.
Loud conservatives have long been waging war against "the liberal media" and have achieved what?
What would I suggest?
Don't sell your land to developers--which is what a lot of Appalachians have done. Don't sell your land to coalmines corporations--which is what some Appalachians have done. Join and/or support local unions--which a lot of Appalachians don't do. Send letters to your Congress person. Stop electing conservatives who are more interested in Wall Street than Main Street. Join Appalachian based lobbying organizations. Write books, maintain blogs, publish articles in newspapers, build a vision of Appalachia that counters the stereotypical images often circulated on television.
All of these tactics will do more for us than waging war against the media--which is an angry and ineffectual response with what payout?
Contact Diane Sawyer and tell her to do another show on the more positive side of Appalachia. Tell her to contact scholars of Appalachia at universities like WCU, ETSU, Appy State, UNC Ashville, WVU, UK, and get them to paint a more nuanced picture of Appalachia and its people.
Anonymous said...
8:42 AM
Myself i think you have too much free time to be so worried I'm PROUD of the title hillbilly if it means that they think i don't understand the way the world really is then that's good i don't want to be like the rest of the world or the U.S as far as I'm concerned they are obsessed with money, and the stock market. Im a God frearin christian mother and wife I've lived in Richlands Va my whole life and could not imagine raising my family anywhere else. The fact is im happy to be set apart let them think were dumb, if we rely on God and are close to our families, and that makes us slow or out of touch who really cares. I want my kids to know they are being raised in one of the most amazing places in the world, im proud of my culture and its past! I think your way too worried about what other people think about you. You kinda seem like you want our wonderful pull-back from society to be pushed into the foreground and brought up to speed...well as far as im concerned leave me here with my mountains, gospel and bluegrass music, pickin and grinnin on the back porch, i like my life tha way it is and frankly i don't care what the rest of the world thinks or says about me. I'm barefoot and pregnant and a very proud Hillbilly!!
Anonymous said...
9:15 AM
Well, what about the movie DELIVERANCE? Whenever (how many decades hence) can we ever salvage our cultural reputation from that stereotype?
Betty Cloer Wallace said...
8:34 PM
Barb-Central Texas said...
6:09 PM
After reading posts about the Diane Sawyer piece on another blog, I need to revise a comment I left earlier.
I don't know anything about O'Reilly, but based on comments left by people from the parts of Kentucky shown on Sawyer's program, she picked some exceptionally bad places to film and misrepresented the place as a whole. For example, someone from Inez KY said that one of the scenes showing a girl walking down a trash-strewn street was actually shot in an alley. If you walked around to the other side of the buildings, you would have found yourself on a normal small-town street.
I noticed that there were healthy stands of weeds in the yards surrounding the mobile homes filmed by Sawyer's crew, which indicates the presence of decent soil and abundant rain. These people all had normally functioning arms and legs and hands. They could have cleaned up the trash, or at least moved it to one side, and made a garden that could have supplied plenty of fresh veggies. They could have used the hundreds of dollars they were spending on booze, soft drinks, chips, and drugs to buy seeds, garden tools, and fertililzer.
Sure enough, a number of the people from Appalachia commented that their families had been very poor but had eaten well, because they grew a garden every year.
I would agree that O'Reilly made unwarranted generalizations if he was referring to all Appalachian people; but if he was talking about the people on whom Sawyer chose to focus, I have to say I probably agree with O'Reilly. It would be pointless to try to help them. The kids who really want to get out of there (meaning away from their toxic family situations, not Appalachia) will find a way. The ones who are willing to take handouts are not likely to be saved by the handouts.
Barb-Central Texas said...
9:41 PM
Being an "outsider" and having now lived and worked amongst the people of E. Tn for over 10 yrs....I can assure you that those are not just "stereotypes". They are still to this day--reflections of reality.
SickenedByLocals said...
9:23 AM