My family moved to Tennessee from elsewhere, so I don't necessarily relate to all of this myself, but I thought this was a fantastic article on the politics and culture of poor, rural white people: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-us-politics-poor-whites/ Any of y'all come across it yet?
It is a real thing. I have, myself, been critical of people that seemed too "hillbilly" earlier in my life. And was on the other side of it when I lived in Connecticut for two years. I have told this story before, but I was talking about getting cable so I could watch UT football in Hartford, and a guy at work asked me "So, ah, do you have cable down there [in Tennessee]?" "Uh, yeah Bob, we have cable."
Glad there's somebody talking about it. I feel like the rural whites are often forgotten or outright belittled by conservatives and liberals alike
Webb from the democrats has a good book about it. I know that they take the attack on coal personal and has hurt a lot of families
It is a good book and understanding Scots-Irish history is important to understanding many dynamics at play in the rural south. With coal though I think it's damaging for Trump to go in all these dead WV and KY towns and say that he'll bring back coal. I get it, he's telling them what they want to hear. Coal in those regions has been dying a slow death for a long time and that isn't going to change.
Part of it is market influence with fracking making natural gas so much cheaper, but he's going to win a lot of the rust belt by being pro energy while Hilary has came out and basically said she wants to end coal.
I can remember domestic exchange students in high school coming over here from California with a sense of intellectual superiority. Didn't take too long to discover they were the dumb ones.
Teachers expected me to be a deviant because I came from two fairly rough families and was the product of teen pregnancy. Once I got out of the town I grew up in, it was fine.
Ha. I think droski would have run circles around these guys. We had good public schools and I think these guys were thinking there would be dirt floors and textbooks teaching us that the earth is flat. They were for some reason really interested in knowing our SAT scores (I suppose so they could gloat) and were blown away at how much better ours were.
I still think this is a thing. A poor white guy (who happens to be particularly bright or have unusual opportunities) can go off to college, clean himself up, lose the accent, and be treated much better than a poor black guy doing the same thing. That said, whites are clearly not immune to marginalization
I'm very thankful for and proud of my grandparents on mom's side who were raised in white trash environments but worked hard at Alcoa and made a better life for my mom and her brother. They've been ridiculed by siblings all their lives for being too big for their britches, which was completely untrue and the product of jealousy. It was definitely religion that changed their lives for the better so I can relate to a lot of the article.
In Tennessee I was Union County trash. I move away, and I'm just a sharp guy. That's white privilege.
I spent 3 weeks in Hartford for training once. I'm not convinced Tuscaloosa is more redneck or backwater.