My roots (along with my entire family) are in eastern Kentucky.

The coal thing: coal has been a dying industry in this area for about 60-70 years, in my estimation. Big Coal alone has kept the mining industry going, turning mountains inside-out looking for more sources of the mineral. The only benefits reaped by citizens are a ravaged landscape and a guaranteed job at the mine.

The racism thing: if you look at a recent census, the demographics are probably something like 97-98% white, with 2% or less black, Hispanic, or other. It wasn’t always like that–at least by 1948 there were enough black people in the area to have a segregated school (I assume it was either a high school or 6-12). I don’t think this explains the racism that exists now, but if a white person never meets a non-white person, their bigotry probably isn’t going away easily. My graduating class, for example, was all white except for a couple of exchange students from Japan and Colombia. I didn’t know any black people until I went to college.

The area has its faults, and there is nothing wrong with being honest about that. The people I know do the very best they can against these terrible odds, and for that I am proud to be a part of that culture.

I suppose you could say I am sensitive to this issue because I’ve seen people use the “oh, they’re bigoted” statement to then justify a “who cares about them?” viewpoint, and I do in fact care about them. Considering that you seem to care about ending MTR, I know that you care as well.

But I do think that the media often grabs onto images of poor rural people as bigoted–they’re essentially powerless, after all, so demonizing them on TV won’t hurt the media people at all–while ignoring similarly bigoted views expressed in wealthy northern and coastal cities and suburbs. My grandmother grew up in Wisconsin, never lived in Appalachia or the south, and currently lives in California, and while she didn’t use the n word she did say that she didn’t want Obama to be president because she didn’t want “little black kids running all over the White House.”

No, I won’t be apologizing for anyone who so casually declares that they won’t ever vote for that n——, nor will I turn my head and pretend these people don’t exist. Racism is an epidemic in Appalachia, and to ignore it is to enable it.

I’m glad you inserted this caveat. Because we all know that Appalachians are ignorant hicks, but hey, here’s this one cool Appalachian Lady! Who opposes an industry that destroys her life and the lives of millions! So you can totes get behind this! Even though the news showed some idiots from Appalachia during the 2008 election!

Thank goodness you only like good Appalachians like Gunnoe.

Yeah, Hattie, I noticed this as well–I’m not an Appalachian myself but in the past couple years I’ve been reading a lot about the region, and the vast majority of what I’ve read, as well as the people I’ve met, have disputed the common stereotype.

The majority of this post was cool, and I like it whenever I see MTR addressed in a forum which isn’t specifically devoted to Appalachian issues, since a wider audience does need exposure to this if anything’s ever going to change. This part, however, rubbed me the wrong way.

And if anyone here wants to know more, the novel Strange as This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake is excellent (Ms. Pancake is actually the sister of the woman who made Black Diamonds and one of my heroes); as is the book Something’s Rising by Silas House and Jason Howard and the anthology Missing Mountains. And if everyone’s in the Northeast Ohio area, the documentary Coal Country is coming to Akron on September 12th–tickets are free.

I’m glad you inserted this caveat. Because we all know that Appalachians are ignorant hicks, but hey, here’s this one cool Appalachian Lady! Who opposes an industry that destroys her life and the lives of millions! So you can totes get behind this! Even though the news showed some idiots from Appalachia during the 2008 election!

Thank goodness you only like good Appalachians like Gunnoe.

Highly recommended… focuses on community efforts to fight this sort of mining..

And that load about jobs is just that, a total load of crap. Even with increased strip mining, there aren’t significantly more jobs to go around, and those that are there are hard to get. And with the decline of the UMW, even if you can get one of the precious strip mining jobs, it’s hard to keep it because any kind of complaint to the bosses gets you fired and you’re back working at Wal Mart.