Rural White Appalachians Feel Victimized, We Should Listen

    I recently wrote an op-ed (Charleston Gazette-Mail, 2/15/23 "Is it Woke Just to be a Decent Person?") explaining and debunking the negative attacks by extremist Republicans on what they call “woke” (the English teacher in me wants to correct that to wokeness). They apply this taunt to anyone who holds ideas different from theirs, especially those held by Democrats, liberals, progressives. Beliefs such as that democracy is important; that our Constitution protects us from being subject to the religious rules and practices that may not agree with our own; that American history is not simply a story of rugged individualists conquering a wilderness and building a modern nation, but that our history contains many shameful chapters in which the majority white settlers oppressed, murdered, and stole from the indigenous people, they enslaved people they imported from Africa and the Caribbean and any immigrants whose skin was not as light as most northern Europeans. Republicans want laws that protect them from having to treat people equally whose sexual identity does not match the two genders recognized in the Christian Bible, ban books, teachers, and ideas that might cause their children to question the narrative of American greatness in all things at all times or cause them discomfort as they grapple with difficult issues encountered in factual history.

Remember Hillary Clinton’s comment that there were different “baskets” of Republicans, most of whom were reasonable and could be worked with, but a minority of whom belonged in the “basket of deplorables?” Remember Obama’s observation to a group of educated urbanites that when some working class folks lose the industries that had supported their communities for generations, sometimes “they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations?”

Clinton and Obama weren’t wrong.  Who could argue that some of those who stormed the U.S. Capitol or those who marched with Tiki torches in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us,” weren’t acting deplorably? While I believe one shouldn’t label a person deplorable, suggesting they can’t change, aren’t many rural white Americans angry, going to churches or seeking news sources that tell them criminals and rapists are flooding over the borders to change our way of life? Aren’t some even considering using their guns to start a revolution?

But I want to argue that we are not going to change minds by writing people off as crazy, stupid, uneducated, or un-American. Despite our facts, statistics, and logic, many every day West Virginians feel as if they are victimized by life in America—and they are not wrong.

West Virginians endure jokes and even discrimination because they use the language they grew up with, a dialect that includes words like ain’t, usages like “he don’t,” accents that make it hard to distinguish pin from pen or make flower sound like “flar.” Their pride in independence: the ability to eke out sustenance from a rocky and mountainous region causes them to be subjected to stereotypes that they walk around with rifles, barefoot, carrying a jug of moonshine. Of course some do—and celebrate that, and will invite you to join them hunting or drinking. Many people believe Trump wasn’t entirely wrong when he said, “there were very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville. We’ve had presidents, writers of the Constitution who it’s hard not to call “very fine people,” but they owned other people, profited off their labor, while being civil and polite to others. Among the January 6 rioters were people who truly believed they were protesting a stolen election. We should never define people in black and white, though their actions can be defined. As to their character, there are always shades of grey. 

My message today is simply this, we can’t write off our neighbors as beyond redemption. They may believe things that we know are untrue, they may fit Appalachian stereotypes: suspicious of outsiders, believers in strict religions that promise hellfire in the hereafter for anyone who touches demon alcohol or strays from moral strictures regarding gender and sexuality.  They may speak and write in what appear to be illiterate ways, and they may express hatred for people who do not look like them, who they actually may fear. Nevertheless, they can be decent people who would “give you the shirt off your back,” tow your car out of a ditch, give you a basket of fresh vegetables. 

Perhaps we can change their minds, but not unless we start from a place of respect. They may be extremists and may be fast asleep to the changes we see in the culture of the United States and the world, but we can begin to wake them up only if we rise above our prejudices.

Paul Epstein is a retired teacher and musician living in Charleston, WV

Make America Great...for Everyone

Is America great? Has it always been great? Or did it fall out of greatness awaiting President Trump to put it right again? To answer without resorting to knee-jerk patriotism (yes, always has been and always will be great!) or knee-jerk criticism (no, cue list of every sin our government has ever committed), we have to look back at our history to honor our achievements and acknowledge our mistakes. We also have to acknowledge that greatness is not perfection, and that perfection can be strived for, but will never be achieved.

America’s Founding Fathers (sexist?) built a new system of government through a process of debate and compromise and eventual consensus, which was great. The first government, ruled by the Articles of Confederation wasn’t great, though. The federal government could not raise money through taxes and depended on voluntary contributions from the states. There was no executive or judicial branch. So the Constitution was written and ratified 12 years later. And within a couple of years the Bill of Rights, ten amendments protecting individual liberties, was passed. Great then? Yes and no. Certainly for property owning white men, early America was pretty great. In most cases, they were the only ones allowed to vote, go to college, own property. Universal suffrage was not one of the rights included in the Bill of Rights. And then there’s the little matter of slavery and the three-fifths rule, which counted enslaved people differently than others in creating Congressional districts. So, it’s a little hard to promote America’s greatness while slavery existed. Oh, and our treatment of Native Americans. When other countries treat groups like we treated Native Americans, we call it ethnic cleansing or genocide. We excuse ourselves by saying it was a different time and that slavery and colonialism were widely practiced in the world. 

Historians emphasize wars. Our Civil War showed an inability to solve our “original sin” of slavery peacefully, is surely not a measure of our greatness, and our various wars of expansion in the 1800’s aren’t either, though there may still be some who subscribe to the “manifest destiny” theory that God granted America to white Europeans from “sea to shining sea.” Our interventions in WWI and WWII demonstrated a great ability to mobilize massive armies and coordinate with our allies to defeat enemies around the world. By the end of WWII, with much of the world a smoking ruin, our soil and industries virtually untouched, and the only country with “The Bomb,” we looked and felt like a great power. This is the America Donald Trump, the son of a successful real estate developer, was born into and remembers as great. 

But inner city and rural poverty, discrimination and racial segregation meant that it was not great for everyone, even for many returning soldiers. Many women, having kept our factories humming while men went off to war, lost their jobs and were told to go back to housekeeping and raising babies. And the Cold War, when we fought to prop up corrupt governments in Vietnam and elsewhere against the expansion of Soviet and Chinese Communism, ultimately showed the limits of the American military. Not so great.

It’s hard to make the case that America was great for most African Americans, for Native Americans, for many women, and even for many poor people in America for most of its history. And yet, America, as a country, has done great things during the last two hundred plus years. Our inventiveness, hard work, and productivity have produced the most thriving economy in history, creating a robust middle class. We’ve made great strides in education, technology, medicine, science, energy, and yes, eventually we keep making improvements in the areas of civil rights and equality for all. And that is pretty great. And our Democracy, with all its flaws, has gradually become more inclusive, our society less racist, our laws more just. 

Most Americans, even, I think, many Trump supporters, realize that President Trump is not great for America. While they may believe that he has their economic interests at heart, they realize that his attacks on anyone who is critical of him are demeaning the office of the presidency. Few Americans are so racist that they support his tirades against Muslims and Mexicans or think that there is equivalency between people marching with Tiki torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us” and those who protest against those ideas. At its greatest, America has shown the world it can unite people to solve problems for its citizens, and yes, absorb immigrants and celebrate their transition into Americans. 

Our court system and the many advocacy organizations that have brought suits in the last two years have shown American greatness by stopping or slowing many of President Trump’s worst executive actions: the Muslim ban, his effort to repeal DACA, the separation of families. However, Republican politicians find themselves in a terrible quandary. So far, very few have shown the courage to stand up to his bullying nature as he hijacked their party through his false promises, propaganda networks, and loyal followers. Some are resigning to avoid having to further compromise their principles, but too many now seem to be bending the limits of our Democracy to protect him: attacking our justice system, threatening the special counsel, seeking to hurriedly install a Supreme Court justice without releasing his full body of work, one who may supply a crucial vote in support of Trump’s executive powers. If they will not rise to the greatness this moment demands, then we Americans must rise up, peacefully, and vote them out, replacing them with a Congress that will hold Trump accountable and investigate his wrongdoings.

Hopefully, this period in the history of our great country will be seen as only a brief detour from the steady progress we have made to make America great…for everyone.