"Saving the people in the Appalachians from themselves."
Reaction:
There were a couple of statements that caught my attention in this article, the one though that I felt the strongest about the particular part where the president of Berea (1897), out of needing money for the school decided to shift attention onto what he called 'Contemporary Ancestors' and made southern West Virginia out to be unintelligent backward 'hillbillies', stating that they needed to be saved from themselves.
I have lived in West Virginia all of my life and if its one thing we do not need is being saved from ourselves now or even then. West Virginian's are a strong people who were able to make a living off the rugged land that is covered completely in mountains. My grandparents and great grandparents both did it and raised their families and never went hungry and had clothes and a roof over their head.
I believe that it is truly ignorant of people to take any culture and slander it just because they do not understand it or have never been exposed to it. And another issue that arose in this article that made me raise an eyebrow was that the people who really pushed these stereotypes were corrupt politicians and people with money and power who couldn't care less about anyone but themselves. They saw that these 'hillbillies' were unknowing of such corrupt thoughts and ideas and took advantage of them stealing land and resources and then slandering them. These folk may have not understood the world of politics and money, but they understood how to treat people properly and with respect, many of these people like myself grew up in a strong family environment and learned what it meant to be a decent human being caring for all and giving of themselves when their neighbor.
Reference:
O'Brien, John . (2003). Tall tales of appalachia. The New York Times, Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/10/opinion/tall-tales-of-appalachia.html
Related Resource:
In this article I found while browsing stereotypes of West Virginia, what really grabbed my attention about this article was that the writer was wanting West Virginian's not to take the hillbilly jokes so lightly and to take responsibility of their heritage and home.
Cite for Resource:
Keeling, Jason. (2007, December 4). West virginia stereotypes: don't believe the hype. A better west virginia . com, Retrieved from http://www.abetterwestvirginia.com/2007/12/04/west-virginia-stereotypes-dont-believe-the-hype/
Cassandra, I really enjoyed reading your response to the article. I agree that when "educated" people make poor comments about others it is simply because they do not know anything about that group.
ReplyDeleteCassandra, you are absolutely right. I feel that outsiders judged the intelligence of the mountaineers by their appearance. Our ancestors were hard workers and did not care much about how they looked. People worked hard all day in the sun or in the coal mines and didn't feel necessary to bath everyday. That doesn't make them stupid.
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