Wednesday, August 12, 2009

The Pissed-off Poor Appalachian White. . .

Here's something to think about: how many pissed-off middle and lower-class people, not just Appalachian natives, are out there? Quite a few, I'd guess. And we don't have to wonder about how they feel, because articles like this one by Kai Wright make the whole shooting match pretty clear. Thanks to Connie May Fowler who made me aware of this on Facebook.

If ever there was a “teachable moment” about race in modern America, now is it. With the birthers and the reparations conspiracy theories and the Nazi imagery at health care meetings, someone’s gotta explain why all these white folks are wilding out. We need an articulate, impassioned race man to clarify things. But not Al Sharpton; I say pass the mic to Jim Webb.

Remember way back when Webb, a Democratic senator from Virginia and the voice of Appalachia’s neglected white yeoman, was sniffing around a veep nod? In the midst of that media moment, he hit on an idea we’d do well to dwell upon. “Black America and Scots-Irish America are like tortured siblings,” Webb patiently explained to Pat Buchanan in a May 2008 Morning Joe appearance on MSNBC. “There’s a saying in the Appalachian mountains. … ‘If you're poor and white, you’re out of sight.’”

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The only NAZIs are the national socialists like Pelosi/Reid/Obama who are trying to institute national health care, and who are now running our banks, insurance companies and automobile companies. Why don't you read the Nazi platform sometime? Look it up in Wikipedia and then tell me who the Nazis are. Certainly not the old folks whose medical treatment will be rationed once the Feds take over health care.

What's more, the only racist is the initial poster on your website who refers to townhall protesters as white. Dividing people into racist collectivist groups IS racist, my friend. Look in the mirror, and stop projecting.

And if you really want to be true to your rural West Virginia roots, then, by God, embrace God. You hung out too long in the university and have been poisoned by the triple soul-snatching philosophies of Marxism, Darwinism and Freudianism -- the three pillars of modernism. God help you.